DePaul Student Perspective: CYCC’s Youth Environmental Leadership Retreat By Katie Abma

I have been hearing about the Chicago Youth Climate Coalition (CYCC) for about a year now, but had yet to attend any of their meetings or hear of an event such as their annual Youth Environmental Leadership Retreat.  Finally, something I was able to go to.

I am currently a senior at DePaul University and when this opportunity was presented at one of the University’s Environmental Concerns Committee (ECC) meeting, I felt like this may be the last time I’d get an opportunity to participate in something like this as a DePaul undergrad. The ECC has grown so much in the relatively short time I’ve been a part of it, and I felt it was important that I go to help represent DePaul as a university that cares about sustainability.

I didn’t quite know what to expect from the retreat—I knew it was being student run, so I was a little nervous that it’d be all over the place. It was nothing of the sort! I should have had more faith in my fellow students. Everyone who was a part of running the workshops and overall flow of the weekend (I unfortunately couldn’t stay the night or for Saturday) did an amazing job at creating a schedule that wasn’t scatterbrained but also wasn’t restrictive.

 

I think I would have really enjoyed the workshops being offered on Saturday, so I was upset that I couldn’t commit my day to it due to the huge amount of homework I had. However, I did like how Friday night was about getting to know your values:  where they come from and why they are yours, in order to know when they are being violated. I found the structure of the retreat—beginning with personal reflection activities and then moving onto creating change and “the world we would like to live in”—to make a lot of sense.

I was inspired but also overwhelmed by everyone’s passion for a common cause. I’ve never been a huge activist type person; I tend to prefer working behind the scenes to attempt to create much needed positive change in systems that exist. But I’ve always admired activism and hope to make it a bigger part of my life, and sustainability issues are those that I feel most passionate about, so this was a perfect place for me to start.

I truly feel like I gained a lot from attending the Friday night section of the retreat. In that short time, I felt connected to the people around me, and part of something vitally important for humankind and all species. I look forward to working with CYCC in the future, and especially to what we as a collective group may be capable of accomplishing.