THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 30, 1994 TAG: 9412300078
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALICIA LUMA, HIGH SCHOOL CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
RECENTLY, AN assembly was held at Cox High School. Something to do with environmental awareness.
At first, no one paid much attention to whoops and yells blasting from the back of the auditorium. Most thought it was just another student. Suddenly, Michele Bissonnette, a member of the YES! tour, came barreling in, kicking off a skit about ways that humans are destroying our Earth.
Educating young people about the health of our planet is the reason for Youth for Environmental Sanity's YES! tour. The Santa Cruz, Calif.-based group of young people send groups of three to six teenagers on tour each year to speak and present skits in schools across the country. They talk about global warming, deforestation, toxic waste, apathy and more.
More than 375,000 students across the country - including students at Kellam, Cox and First Colonial high schools - have been reached by YES!'s message. Some give money, and some even end up on tour themselves.
Ocean Robbins, the son of EarthSave activist and author John Robbins, was active in the creation of YES! The family is heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune, but Ocean decided on a life of environmental action.
Michele and the two YES! members at Cox High are strict vegetarians who only buy Earth-friendly products and have dedicated a year of their lives to spreading the word of environmentalism.
Because Michele, 19, grew up in Los Angeles, doctors estimate that she has 14 percent less lung space than she should because of all the pollutants that have collected in her lungs.
The reason she is with YES! is apparent from a question she asked during the Cox performance: ``How many people are content with the state of the world today, and how many would be content to let their children grow up here?''
``I realized I wasn't,'' Michele said, ``and nothing was going to happen if I just sit around. And YES! was the first organization that came around that I really believed in.''
YES! is completely youth run and has a board of advisers that includes Olivia Newton-John, Casey Kasem and the late River Phoenix. Presentations include skits, slide shows, testimonials from cast members and a discussion about solutions. Another part of YES!'s mission is starting environmental clubs in schools across the country.
On the Saturday after school presentations such as the one at Cox, YES! holds a workshop for students interested in starting an environmental club in their school or improving ones that already exist.
YES! member Om Bodhi St. John said that seeing new kids get active is the best part of his job. Bodhi, 18, was born in Canada, but for the past eight years has lived in Palo Alto, Calif. He is the most enthusiastic member of YES! and his colleagues joke that he was ``genetically engineered'' to be on tour.
YES! came to Bodhi's school when he was a sophomore, but he didn't think too much of it because his mind was on a ski trip he had planned for that weekend. But YES! came again his senior year, and that time he decided to go to one of the YES! environmental summer camps.
After camp, Bodhi auditioned for the YES! tour, made the grade and has been working toward a better environment ever since. He turned down the college he had applied for, the University of California at Santa Cruz, to do two years on the YES! tour.
Then there's Seth Griffin, 18, of Arcata, Calif., who joined YES! because his ``mission'' is ``to plant the seed of awareness about the environment in the youth of America.''
At a presentation at Friends School in Virginia Beach, Seth told a story about a deer that his mother had found. The small deer was blind because of pesticides used in the forest in which it lived.
The elementary school children's faces changed as he told that story. They were the faces of the next generation of environmentalists. It seemed, somehow, that Seth was completing his mission. MEMO: GETTING INVOLVED
Youth for Environmental Sanity is a teen-run, non-profit group. If
you'd like to start a club, attend a summer camp or audition for a spot
on the tour, call (408) 459-9344 or write to YES!, 706 Frederick St.,
Santa Cruz, Calif., 95062. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Alicia Luma is a home schooled junior.
by CNB