Ryan Camero is a twenty-two year old community organizer and arts activist born and raised in Stockton, California. This year, he won a Brower Youth Award, officially recognizing him as a young leader making impressive strides in the environmental movement. He is one of six youth in the entire nation to be given this award. We want to send him to COP21 (Conference of Parties), which is a United Nations-led series of negotiations that hope to reach global consensus about the response to climate change. This is why we should send him.
- He has dedicated his life to social and environmental justice.
Ryan wears multiple hats as the Outreach Coordinator of the California Student Sustainability Coalition (That’s us!), Delta Artivist for Restore the Delta, and a California-based “Bee” storyteller and educator for the Beehive Design Collective, He has dedicated his life to social and environmental justice, because he knows that the need for change is greater than ever before.
- He can and will be able to represent California’s story at an international level.
He is representing Stockton, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the Central Valley of California at the international climate talks in Paris from November to December. His presence there will elevate California’s story of drought and water privatization as one of many across the world of ecological disasters, and uplift the urgency for the necessary positive social change that protects our natural resources, beautiful ecosystems, and thriving ways of living harmoniously for generations ahead.
- He uses multiple mediums to educate and communicate.
“I am a deep lover of characters and story arcs, and these themes inform my mindset about life. I’ve spent the last five years organizing on the local and national level, and while sometimes emotionally disheartening, I feel the experience has given me resilience and perspective in dealing with our era’s most complex monsters of social issues.” – Ryan Camero
His organizing initially sprouted from arts-based projects. Stockton struggles with deep pockets of poverty, gang culture, drug abuse and violence, and he believes wholeheartedly in the transformative power of expression to achieve cross-cultural and intergenerational solidarity. In being active in this work, he gained a lived understanding of both the internal and external oppression in his community which reinforced his view that organizing approaches must be holistic
Ryan has the chance to use his passion for fighting for a better world on a whole new level.
He needs your support.
In the situation of many other students, Ryan does not have the funds to get to COP21. Funds gathered will go directly to travel expenses throughout the trip, housing and food, and research and preparation to participate as a delegate in the negotiations. If you donate, you also have the chance to receive some of Ryan’s Art.