Graeme Hopkins
2024 Youth Climate Activism Award - Essay
Graeme Hopkins with mentor Jewlz Nyasulu.
Graeme is a 19 year old from Saskatchewan.
My name is Graeme Hopkins. I am a 19-year-old student currently on a gap year. My work primarily focuses on the value of experiential learning towards leadership development and capacity-building in future environmental leaders. I am passionate about connecting youth to the outdoors, fostering community, and inspiring a culture of service and collaboration.
In October of 2023, I successfully applied for a $3,000 Ocean Action Grant from Ocean Wise to host a Saskatchewan Youth Summit for Environmental Leadership. I gathered 7 youth ages 13-18 together at Waskesiu Lake, Prince Albert National Park for three days of outdoor experiential learning activities (hiking, canoeing), service activities (water quality-testing, native plant seed bomb-making), and presentations hosted by youth in Canada who have achieved success in the environmental leadership sector. These included presentations on microplastics, ocean litter, and shoreline cleanups, and the value of inclusion in impactful leadership. Each youth is now working towards creating an environmental leadership project in their home communities.
Graeme and youth at Prince Albert National Park funded by Ocean Wise. View the project here.
Image courtesy @youthvolab. View on Instagram.
In March of 2024, I received $5,000 in funding from Volunteer Albertaβs ACSEL program to host an Alberta Youth Summit for Environmental Leadership. This event brought 10 youth ages 13-18 together at Barrier Lake Field Station, Kananaskis, for a similar experience. The primary focuses of the summit program are peer-to-peer education, experiential outdoor learning, and youth capacity-building. As with the Saskatchewan Summit, several participants provided positive feedback that the summit helped them achieve their goals in environmental leadership or connected them with a community of like-minded youth that they did not have access to before.
In December of 2023, I founded and began hosting the Saskatoon Newcomer Youth Outdoor Adventure Club (SNYOAC) in collaboration with the Saskatoon Open Door Society. The club was initially funded by the Canada Service Corps through the Canadian Gap Year Associationβs Impact Fellowship program and is now sponsored by the Jane Goodall Foundation. The SNYOAC connects immigrant youth (ages 13-18) and their families with free-of-charge outdoor activities and experiences in Saskatoon and Saskatchewan with the goal of fostering community, encouraging outdoor recreation, and inspiring stewardship of nature.
As of the time of writing, 7 meetings have been hosted:
A visit to the local zoo and forestry farm park with a focus on conservation,
Tubing at Optimist Hill - Saskatoon,
A visit to a temporary exhibit at the local Remai Modern museum of modern art on the importance of plants to global ecosystems,
Tobogganing at Victoria Park,
Kick-sledding at Victoria Park,
Hiking at a local natural conservation area,
A horse-drawn sleigh ride through the downtown river valley area.
The next meeting, scheduled for May 5th, 2024, will be kayaking on the South Saskatchewan River. In total, over 30 participants and family members have been engaged through the program. Numerous participants have provided feedback that the program was a crucial support system in their first months in Canada or that the club activities inspired them to spend more time outside in the future.
Graeme has also written a book!
As part of the submissions application we asked participants to answer these 3 questions in addition to their essay or video.
What future goals do you have around your environmental and climate work, and do you have any future projects in mind?
I wish to expand my Saskatoon Newcomer Youth Outdoor Adventure Club into a sustainable and long-lasting initiative. I hope to also inspire volunteers in other cities to establish similar programs for their newcomer youth and families. I am currently working on planning my next provincial youth environmental leadership summit in Manitoba with new funding from Ocean Wise. From late April - August 2024, I will be participating in the Eco-Action Accelerator program offered by Ocean Wise. Through this program, I will receive mentorship and coaching from experienced community organizers or workers in the non-profit sector on how to achieve all of these goals.
At some point, I hope to host provincial youth environmental leadership summits annually in every Canadian province. I also aspire to create a program that will engage the youth living in the northern Canadian territories, where travel is often difficult and the majority of youth live in extremely remote communities.
If you could share with us one message of hope for our planet, what would it be?
Find the fun. In an age of climate crisis and widespread feelings of βeco griefβ and βclimate anxiety,β particularly amongst youth, it can be extremely difficult to remain hopeful or optimistic. My work in environmental and climate advocacy is unorthodox, but I believe it is no less valuable.
At this time in particular, I see many organizations and leaders devaluing βfun,β whether that is by defunding programs that focus on youth engagement or experiential learning, or by concentrating all resources on more concrete projects. However, I believe that by devaluing fun, we devalue ourselves. In order to be happy and healthy, we must have community and safe places to play, to explore, to enjoy nature.
In this regard, the natural world is our most valuable resource. We must protect it, but we must acknowledge why we must protect it. βFunβ may seem like an abstract or useless concept, but it is critical to understanding why we need nature so deeply. The programs I facilitate, in many ways, focus on βfun.β They have not only changed the lives of the participants (as per their feedback), but they have changed my life as well.
If we can continue to find the fun, our Earth will always be safe.
Who or what inspires you to work on climate change?
I live with autism, otherwise known as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or Aspergerβs Syndrome, as it was called when I was first diagnosed. I was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and remained there until I graduated from grade 9.
During middle school and early high school, I struggled immensely. My unique way of perceiving the world, special behaviours, and intense interests isolated me, making it almost impossible to make friends. I struggled academically in a school system not designed to accommodate my ways of learning. I consistently felt disconnected from my peers and the world around me.
On days when these struggles felt insurmountable, I knew I could always find comfort in nature. I would take long walks through the Rideau River region of my home city, observing the animals and plants I saw around me. I found fun and relaxation in the outdoor club at my school, attending every meeting and activity.
In September of 2018 (my grade 9 year), I was selected to attend that yearβs Ontario Youth Summit for Environmental Leadership, hosted by the organization Ontario Nature. My life was changed. Though I still struggled to connect with others, I made memories to last a lifetime and found a new passion for environmental advocacy. I realized that nature was my friend when I had none, my support when I needed it most.
From this time on, I became determined to act to protect nature and mitigate the impacts of climate change. In high school, even more mental health struggles presented themselves, constricting my free time and making organized advocacy impossible. Throughout my studies, I longed to pursue my goals of environmental advocacy but felt helpless to do so.
Upon graduation from high school, I knew that what I truly wanted was to first take a gap year to finally achieve my dreams. However, my methods ultimately became unorthodox. I reflected on how my experiences of experiential learning inspired who I am today.
Now living in Saskatchewan after a move in grade 10, I saw the true disparity in experiences that exists in Canada for the first time. The clubs and summits I had access to in Ontario simply did not exist in Saskatchewan. I thought of all the deserving youth living in my new home province who would never have a chance to live with such experiences.
Now, my work focuses on providing experiential environmental learning programs to underserved youth in Saskatchewan and beyond. It is my hope that, through these programs, I am able to provide experiences to these youth that will shape them in the ways that I was shaped by my experiences.