Green Silicon Valley is a student-led 501(C)(3) organization dedicated to bringing free environmental education to K-8 schools in order to improve climate education interest and outcomes, and provide training for future climate educators. For a transcript, please visit climatebreak.org/green-silicon-valley/
Green Silicon (GSV) Valley is a nonprofit organization founded and led by Wilcox High School students Ayush Garg, Dev Shah and Abhi Tenneti that aims to make environmental education more accessible and personal, while also training future climate leaders on climate education. GSV seeks to realize its mission by creating hands-on kits for elementary and middle schoolers to learn about climate phenomena and solutions, and sending high school students to present classes and sessions. Through this process, they are able to spread climate education to younger generations, while also helping high school students learn how to communicate about climate issues. This helps prepare future generations of climate leaders, as well as instilling an early understanding of the importance of climate work.
According to co-founder Ayush Garg, the project arose from the business club when Garg, Shah, and Tenneti were awarded a $5,000 grant from Silicon Valley Power which allowed them to conduct six presentations at Peterson Middle School (Green Energy Futures). Each presentation includes hands-on activities such as building wind turbine models, creating water filtration systems, and running erosion experiments to help depict different climate topics. According to GSV, they have managed to reach 680 students so far across 12 partner schools in 4 different countries (Green Silicon Valley). Shah says that GSV is seeking to expand its reach to more high school chapters and partner elementary schools across the Bay Area.
As GSV grows, it will likely run into issues with obtaining sufficient funding to carry out its goals. According to Shah, “It's gonna be a lot harder to fund international and national presentations. That's definitely the hardest part right now, where we have the volunteers, we have the teachers, we have the students, but we just need the funding for the kids.” Further, the project has run into some issues making its way into classrooms, with conflicting schedules and curriculum. GSV is accepting donations, volunteer and intern applicants, and presentation requests in order to continue expanding.
Dev Shah is a co-founder of Green Silicon Valley, alongside Ayush Garg and Abhi Tenneti. He is a student at Adrian Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, California.
For a transcript of this episode, please visit climatebreak.org/green-silicon-valley/
Ethan: I’m Ethan Elkind, and you’re listening to Climate Break — climate solutions in a hurry. Today’s proposal: Training the next generation of climate leaders through STEM education in elementary and middle school. We spoke with Dev Shah, a co-founder of the nonprofit Green Silicon Valley.
Dev Shah: Green Silicon Valley is a student led organization, based on stem, hands-on projects. We have high school volunteers who go to middle and elementary schools and they teach the students there about stem, the issues with stem, how they can help, and so on and so forth.
Ethan: High schoolers with Green Silicon Valley primarily conduct these presentations with STEM kits that represent real life climate change scenarios. This helps the students practice educating, while allowing elementary and middle school students to learn about climate solutions.
Dev Shah: For example, let's say we're targeting more on the solar energy side of it. We’d have a volunteer group, they'd hand out the kits to the kids. They would build a kit. After they've built it, we would go out and test it. They would see how we can harness the sun's power to create energy, and that way they learn that there's more than just one way that energy can be formed.
Ethan: Green Silicon Valley currently has 5 partner schools. In order to expand their program to reach their goals, they seek to convince both schools and potential donors that their model is effective.
Dev Shah: As we expand, it's gonna be a lot harder to fund international and national presentations. So that's definitely the hardest part right now, where we have the volunteers, we have the teachers, we have the students, but we just need the funding for the kids.
Ethan: To learn more about Green Silicon Valley and climate education, visit climatebreak.org.