 Teens all over the world are helping. How? In very many ways! There are thousands of teens everywhere standing up for their rights. Even you can be a teen activists! People are fighting for things like LGBTQ rights, E-waste, women's rights, and animal rights. There are some pretty cool teen activists in North Carolina and even Asheville. One of them is Hallie Turner. She was in Raleigh when she was planning to sue NC for climate change. Sadly she didn’t succeed the first time but now at 15, she did it again. Two other teens in North Carolina- Emily Liu (16 years old), and Arya Pontula (17 years old)- were helping Hallie make a petition to the state Department of Environmental Quality and the state Environmental Management Commission to make a rule for a sharp reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next three decades. One person that isn’t from NC is Jazz Jennings. Jazz uses her life to spread awareness of her life as a transgender girl. She has a YouTube channel that follows her life called “I am Jazz.” She vlogs, speaks about her family and friends, and about her issues being trans. This also makes her the youngest transgender female to talk about her issues publicly. She was born October 6, 2000 in South Florida. Her parents say that, “she was clear on being a girl as soon as she could speak.” She eventually started a foundation called Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation in 2007 to assist transgender youth. Alana Rosie West is an animal rights activist. “She studies social work and human rights, and she’s dedicated to destigmatizing mental health care and ending cruelty to animals”, says peta2. It started when she was 7 and she started finding out about zoos and aquariums didn’t treat animals right. She is now hoping that SeaWorld will close. Another one from North Carolina is our very own Sam Phillips from Asheville. Sam was 16 years old when he went to North Dakota to protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Born in August of 2000, Sam knew from a young age the effects of pollution and cared a lot about economics. He was homeschooled most of his life and only went to school for one year saying that school just never did him right. During his 16th year he went out to North Dakota for 2 months in the Spring and 1 month in the very harsh winter. Now 17 years old, Sam is applying for Warren Wilson College and wanted to major in Economics and continue in helping the earth. (Sam is my brother and is where I got my information). These are only some of the many teen activists especially in North Carolina and Asheville; they are really changing our society that we live in. I encourage you to use some of these people as influences and try something new everyday even if it’s something small to help because it might end up changing the world piece by piece. Story by Mira Phillips
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_Jennings https://everygirlhastherighttolearn.weebly.com/what-is-teen-activism.html Comments are closed.
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