Summit Success!

 

We are so grateful for all who planned, participated and supported our SEVEN International Montessori Adolescent Summits! They were so powerful because of the work and dedication of those behind the scenes and the dynamic social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual capabilities of all the participants.

 

Below is the convergence of their work: their words, their mission.

 

Montessori Adolescent Summits – Consolidated Manifesto 2017

 

We live in a world full of beauty and a vast diversity of living things and natural resources. We have learned that we are not alone and that we must respect all species and their environments. Humans should be the “keepers’’ and guardians of this diversity, and to do so we need to keep studying the natural world. We should understand interdependence and the connections between the living and non-living resources in order to protect them.

 

As young as we are, we know that our small efforts can make a significant difference in the fight against social and environmental concerns. In order to achieve our vision of a clean world, we commit ourselves to do the following actions:

 

  • Establish ties among adolescents not just from our school communities but also from other cities to take action, solve real life problems with environment, energy, and engineering solutions.

 

  • Require government to take more rigorous measures when establishing and complying with laws that promote environmental care.

 

  • Conduct research and inform the community of current situations and advocate solutions to include renewable energies, carbon scrubber strategies, environmentally friendly buildings, carbon-absorbing paints.

 

  • Lessen the use of fossil-burning fuels by carpooling, switching to e-powered vehicles, and/or walking or biking.

 

  • Start projects in our local communities that will lessen air pollution and carbon footprint such as reforestation, mangrove restoration, waste management.

 

  • Demand transparency in big business.

 

  • Endorse businesses that use the triple bottom line – money, impact on the community, and care of the environment.

 

  • Model responsible consumption-Vote with your dollar.

 

  • Eat healthy by purchasing organic food which currently do not include GMOs.

 

  • Eat local, shopping at farmer’s markets, and growing one’s own food.

 

  • Avoid processed foods.

 

  • Guide the school community into sustainable practices by encouraging school gardens and using the 4 R’s recycle, reuse, reduce and rot (composting).

 

  • Influence the larger community by growing more native plants, making healthy food cost effective, educating others about sustainable food systems such organic, GMOs, biomimicry, climate change, saving seeds, etc.

 

  • Promote responsible urban development with strategic plans that take into account garbage deposits, water treatment, distribution of spaces and respect for the green areas that we still have.

 

  • Foster dialogues that let different voices be heard

 

  • Cultivate social equality by including refugees and other marginalized populations and helping people in need.

 

  • Create safe places to live.

 

We have to recognize the cultural implications of climate change, which is not only destroying our environment, but is also causing the disappearance of a great part of our culture. This crisis has a spiritual dimension. The earth not only suffers materially, but our identity, our connection to the earth, and everything that makes us human has been broken.

 

As mass media fills our lives with bad news about the condition of our planet, we grow numb to these messages and scroll down on our mobiles feeling powerless and wanting to find something better to watch or hear. This sense of hopelessness creates a kind of paralysis in which people talk about the inevitable extinction of this or that species and very few take real action. It is time to wake up from this numbness; it is time to take it personal; it is time to do real research; it is time to engage in a project no matter how small it is. Adolescents are 50% of the population, but we are 100% the future. It is time to work. Please, join us.

 

The above Consolidated Manifesto was created from the following summits*:

Air: Cagayan de Oro, Philippines

Land: Chihuahua, Mexico

Plants: Houston, Texas

Humans: Dundas, Ontario

Humans: Vienna, Austria

Energy: Huntsburg, Ohio

Animals: Children’s Eternal Rainforest, Costa Rica

*Click the summit focus area for a copy of their original manifesto.