Maya Cota, President-Climate Kids Club, Mission Bay High School
What do you hope to accomplish as a climate ambassador?
"As a part of the relatively younger generation I can vouch for the importance impressed upon us of time and the time we have to positively impact everything around us, most importantly our planet. We have reached a point in which the youth are going to have a great, if not, the greatest significance in the world and working towards bettering it. In being a climate ambassador, I hope to engage my peers to form steady youth participation in the opportunities Climate Kids has for them and manifesting into their daily lives what they feel is important and contributing to the better good. I would love to be able to pique children’s interest in sciences, involving them in a rewarding and empowering field that allows them to engage themselves, feeling that change truly is feasible and that we can save the planet we have."
What big plans do you have for the coming year that you want people to know about?
"Living in San Diego and going to Mission Bay High School, I feel there have been an abundance of opportunities to actively participate in environmentally bounded projects. My teacher, Mr. Walters, has given myself along with other students the chance to work with Hubbs Sea World in raising white sea bass, raising red abalone, and introducing us to the Climate Kids Program through the Climate Science Alliance, participating in events across San Diego. From Earth Day in Balboa Park to Intertribal Earth Day at the Pala Reservation, the most personally rewarding of all was educating elementary students from my community in climate literacy. Being a part of this program has been nothing if not inspiring to see the excitement the students get when we visit and how enthralled they seem to be in the topics we cover. For this reason I have decided to form a Climate Kids club at my high school in hopes of garnering more ambassadors to continue spreading climate literacy through our community. Along with the formation of this club myself and my peers are working on community initiatives to reduce waste by eliminating plastic straw use in community establishments and well as plastic utensil use in our school cafeterias by offering more environmentally conscious choices. I enter these endeavors with hopeful anticipation for what is to come."
View Maya's story as well as those of other ambassadors and organizations working on climate literacy in the south coast at: https://arcg.is/1aPjjS.