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Pittsburgh Youth Action Board Wins Environmental Advocacy Award
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By: Ben, Marlon, Marcus, Dianna, Candy, and Michael, Earth Force Youth Action Board members

The Pittsburgh Youth Action Board described their successful project, which won the William W. Mullins Environmental Advocacy Award:

Since January, we have been involved in Earth Force's Youth Action Board (YAB). In our first year, we focused on a major issue related to transportation: the health effects of diesel exhaust on children. We met and interacted with experts in the field of environmental health, learned about the links between diesel emissions and deaths from cancer and heart attacks, and designed a public awareness campaign to empower others to make a difference.

Our partners for this project were the Pittsburgh Transportation Equity Project/Environmental Justice Institute, GASP, artist and CCI employee Indigo Raffel, and the Allegheny Front, a weekly radio show covering environmental issues in the region.

We spent weeks learning about diesel emissions and their effects on human health. We knew we had to narrow our focus if we really wanted to make an impact on the issue. After the release in February of "Diesel and Health in America: The Lingering Threat," which had found that 21,000 people die each year from the effects of diesel emissions, we knew we had to do something about it.

We conducted informal surveys and found that many people knew that bus exhaust was not healthy, but they had no idea it could be so harmful. We read more articles and did more research and decided we were ready to develop a public awareness campaign. Rather than design brochures or hold a press conference, we wanted to create an "event" to educate others about the dangers of diesel emissions.

This evolved into a 15x15" canvas that we can take with us to different events where the public will gather to learn about our project. Indigo Raffel, a local artist, came and explained the concept of a labyrinth to us. A labyrinth is a symbol of both a journey and a puzzle. It's like a maze, but it has no dead ends - just one way in and one way out. You think about your problem on the way in, reach the center, turn around and while walking out, you come up with solutions.

Our labyrinth is painted blue and green and has orange cards on the ground as you walk in that introduce bits of information about diesel - why it's harmful, the number of people affected, and how kids are affected the most. After reaching the center, you turn around and read the pink cards - which talk about alternative fuels, anti-idling policies and how people can make a difference. When people leave the labyrinth, we ask them to sign a postcard to DEP Secretary McGinty, asking her to develop a statewide anti-idling regulation for diesel vehicles.

We have only used the labyrinth at one event so far, but the feedback was very positive. Many people said they'd never realized the issue was so serious - and they were quick to sign our postcards. We plan to use it at upcoming events this summer to increase our outreach to the public and ask them to help us convince the DEP to stop idling in Pennsylvania.

The other outreach piece has been the Allegheny Front radio show. As we learned about the issues and developed a project idea, reporters followed our story. Our project was featured in an episode that aired in April 2005 and a second segment will air in June to highlight the public's reactions to our labyrinth.

We as teenagers have been changed by our YAB experience. While some of us have never used public transportation, we have used school buses, or we live in areas with a lot of truck traffic - we are all affected by diesel emissions. It is something we had not thought a lot about before joining the YAB, but now we are able to tell our families and friends about it and we recognize that a group of students can change people's perspectives on a problem. It has inspired us to become more involved in environmental issues in our communities.

NewsClip: Allegheny County Adopts Anti-Idling Regulation


7/15/2005

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