Six Young Leaders Honored for Contributions to Maine’s Environmental Movement

Posted on Could 24, 2022 by NRCM

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Six younger changemakers from throughout Maine are being honored with the most recent spherical of Brookie Awards for his or her management and effectiveness tackling a variety of environmental points.

The varied group of “Brookies” embrace school and highschool pupil activists and scientists, starting from ages 16 to 26. Every awardee is creatively implementing options to environmental challenges dealing with Mainers from local weather motion and clear power to protected consuming water and wildlife conservation.

“The contributions these younger leaders have already made are unimaginable and provides me nice hope for the way forward for the environmental motion in Maine,” mentioned NRCM CEO Lisa Pohlmann. “We’re grateful to each one among our 2022 Brookie Award winners for main by instance and pushing us all to construct a more healthy, extra equitable future for Maine’s atmosphere and communities.”

The Brookie Awards is a statewide program hosted by NRCM Rising, the younger member arm of the Pure Assets Council of Maine (NRCM), to raise and amplify the voices of the rising technology of environmental leaders in Maine.

The 2022 Brookie Award winners are: 

• Noela Altvater of the Passamaquoddy Reservation at Sipayik is an Indigenous clear water advocate and neighborhood chief who amplified the voices and tales of her household’s every day wrestle with polluted and poisonous water. Noela fought for passage of LD 906, a brand new regulation to make sure that Passamaquoddy tribal members can have entry to wash consuming water shifting ahead.

• Lucas Healy of Castine is president of the campus sustainability membership at Maine Maritime Academy and advocated for renewable power curriculum to be taught on campus to arrange college students for clear power careers. Lucas and his staff constructed an operational wind turbine and testing facility for school to combine into their courses.

• Kosis Ifeji of Bangor is a youth local weather justice activist who serves as Co-chair of the Nature Based mostly Training Consortium’s Local weather Training Coverage Advocacy Working Group. Kosis led a grassroots marketing campaign to go a brand new regulation, LD 1902, to offer grant funding for local weather change training in Maine’s public faculties.

• Kiara Frischkorn of Biddeford is President of the College of New England Biddeford campus sustainability membership the place she organized a sequence of profitable seashore clean-ups that engaged fellow college students and neighborhood members in decreasing waste. Kiara has empowered youth to develop their private story of advocacy by talking at local weather rallies and trainings statewide.

• Greg LeClair of Waterville is Founding father of Maine Large Evening, a citizen science venture that collects information on amphibian street crossings and mortalities and advocates for options. Greg has collaborated with the Maine Division of Transportation on infrastructure funding and options to guard Maine’s amphibian species.

• Anna Siegel of Yarmouth is the Maine Youth Motion Campaigns Coordinator, a founding member of Maine Youth for Local weather Justice, and serves on the Yarmouth Committee for Power Effectivity and Sustainability. Anna led the marketing campaign to go LD 99 to divest the Maine Public Worker Retirement System from fossil fuels.

The 2022 college of Brookie Award winners will likely be honored at a ceremony and reception on July 14^th at O’Maine Studios in Portland from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Hannah Pingree, Director of the Governor’s Workplace of Coverage Innovation and the Future, will emcee the occasion. This system is made attainable because of the beneficiant assist of L.L. Bean; Norman Hanson DeTroy Attorneys at Regulation; Drummond Woodsum; and Reynders, McVeigh Capital Administration.

“Maine has an extended and proud historical past of environmental management, and our 2022 Brookie Award winners are constructing on that legacy,” mentioned NRCM Rising Director Todd Martin. “From York to Washington County, from coastal communities to rural cities, our 2022 Brookies are working to guard the woods, waters, and wildlife that make Maine such a particular place to name residence.”

Greater than 50 younger environmental leaders throughout 14 of Maine’s 16 counties utilized for a Brookie Award. Candidates had been evaluated on their management, creativity, collaboration, and constructive influence for Maine’s atmosphere. Every Brookie Award winner receives a $2,000 money prize, a brief video about their work, a six-week public talking and speechwriting coaching, and an invite to a nature-based retreat with their fellow winners the place they are going to take part in skill-building classes and interact with different environmental and political leaders in Maine.

The Brookie Awards had been made attainable by the generosity and early partnership of the Quimby Household Basis and the Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Basis. To study extra concerning the Brookie Awards go to: https://www.brookieawards.org/