By Sara Ballenger

Students from all over the peninsula, including Los Altos and Mountain View, are concerned about the environment.

So much so, they are taking part in a program based in Palo Alto called Acterra’s High School Group. Acterra, a Bay Area non-profit environmental organization, strives to instill a love of nature into high school students, develop leadership abilities and teach individual responsibility for local resources.

Students gather at weekly meetings to discuss issues and plan activities.

“At our meetings, we spend time getting to know one another, as we often have new members,” said Mountain View High School student Laura Hess. “We sometimes have educational speakers on topics from permaculture (indigenous sustainable agriculture) to the Israel-Palestine conflict to local government representatives. Each week we also have a potluck dinner of vegan organic food.”

In addition to the weekly meetings, students are involved in projects throughout the peninsula, including converting an abandoned plot of land in Mountain View into an organic permaculture community garden.

“We’re there every Sunday, and some of us during the week,” Hess said. “When citrus fruits came in season, we spent multiple weekends picking fruit from people’s trees who weren’t going to eat it and delivering it to local homeless shelters like Urban Ministries in Palo Alto. It’s incredible how much friut goes to waste on trees.”

Former Los Altos High School student and Acterra employee Daniel Carr hopes that others will learn from these students’ example.

“We in America, particularly in Los Altos, are among the wealthiest people in the world,” Carr said. “The more resources we consume, the bigger impact we have on the planet. We, in affluent areas, must work to balance this, by giving back to the earth.”

In order to educate more people about the environment, Acterra’s High School Group also organizes “Deep Green Global Training,” a youth activist conference which explores environmental and social justice issues. This year’s eighth annual event, scheduled for May 17-19 at the Marin Headlands Institute, will focus on the need for environmental education to be a part of the lives of youth.

“We’ve got some really awesome speakers and a slew of educational workshops and skills training,” Hess, who is helping organize the event, said. “Education is where empowerment begins. There are little things that we can do in our daily lives, like eating organic food, using alternative transportation and cutting down on our general consumption.”

Currently, the High School Group has 30 to 40 members, Hess said, but she hopes more will join.

“I have done all of the school activities, and I have found the Acterra Schools Group to be, by far, the most positive, educational, interesting and life-changing experience of them all,” Hess said. “It has enabled me to examine and understand my world and change it for the better.”

For more information, logon to: www.acterra.org.