Hello! My name is Brooke. I am one of the co-founders of Environmental Scouts. I have always loved all animals (including bugs!) I was 10 years old when our schools and after-school activities were shut down because of the COVID quarantine. I started wondering: “Why isn’t climate change being treated like a pandemic?” This helped create momentum for the Environmental Scouts!
Environmental Scouts has now matured well from that original vision with the launch of its comprehensive sustainability and environmental education programs.
Our founding video from early 2020!
For my 10th birthday party in February 2020, in lieu of gifts, I asked my friends if they would instead donate to one of 5 environmental charities that I picked. My family and I have been getting better at scrutinizing our buying habits and reducing consumerism over the last year. In particular, we gave up eating meat and are still working toward an even stricter plant-based diet. We have also reduced our plastic usage and have been composting for the last three years. Choosing the charity causes for my birthday party was an opportunity for me and my friends to research what other charitable organizations are doing to help the environment.
Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading throughout world, and my elementary school in La Canada Flintridge, California, closed to help flatten the curve of infection. We had online curriculum for distance learning but I could not see my friends. We communicated via text messages and Google Hangouts, and I spent a lot of time online. I realized this is a powerful form of communication while we are all at home – and can reach all young people worldwide. This world event became the perfect momentum for forming the Environmental Scouts!
More importantly, I also feel there is a bigger message and an even bigger crisis than the COVID-19 pandemic. Why isn’t climate change considered a pandemic? It affects not only us humans, but all living and non-living things alike. How the world responded to the coronavirus outbreak (and how we all drastically changed our ways of living) shows me how quickly we can all act. Hooray!
After a lot of family brainstorming, we began to see the COVID-19 pandemic as a chance and not just a challenge. My parents, Yvonne and Dan, saw this idea as an opportunity to connect individuals and non-profit organizations to share their educational resources for a bigger voice. Environmental issues are intimately interwoven and we all have the common goal of cleaning up our planet. With my dad’s experience in the media industry — specifically social media analytics and promotion, and my mom’s medical background and passion for health and the environment, we were confident that we could help inspire this platform for greater awareness and action.
Brooke’s Mid-COVID 2021 Update
