Sathvika Arumilli

00:00
Hi, my name is Sathvika Arumilli. I am in 10th grade and I'm currently a University Preparatory Academy Charter and some of my experiences like growing up and being exposed to nature. I am currently living in Silicon Valley so I've been surrounded by a lot of tech and innovation more than nature but from a young age I was always like exposed to the importance of sustainability and environmental conservation especially given the rapid development and impact on our surroundings whether it was like through school or community events or just family discussions i saw the urgency of climate action and it became increasingly evident to me that change needed to happen I was looking for programs to get involved into climate action and I ended up stumbling upon this one and what I found about CYCP that was different than other climate programs was it was more like hands-on and you know you got to get more involved in your school community and you know get just to get to learn more about the environment and being able to take you step by step more than like here's all the work and you can do it by yourself so so definitely participating in the CYCP program was an eye-opening experience it was both challenging and rewarding designing the policy and the way i went about designing it was first looking at my school community and environment and where we're at right now.

02:08
It's we're inside our schools currently renting a building inside another like previously owned building so I can't really make any like recycling kind of changes. It's a matter of how can I get that change into my school without having to have issues with the building owners and the staff at the school. So I'm trying to find, I haven't passed the policy yet, so I'm still trying to like find ways to get it known to the board and I've done public comment for right now.

02:44
But yeah, so that's the process I am at right now. For like creating it overall, I had to make sure it was engaging with my school's executive director and his assistant, because that's the way I, as a student, I could get onto the board meeting schedule. and it required like careful planning and collaboration making sure I'm doing stuff at the right time and you know and then it's like oh how do I also manage time effectively right with like school responsibilities.

03:24
Also support is really hard to gain at my school because when I just transferred to my school at the beginning of 10th grade so a lot of people don't know me yet and they were like I suddenly came in with this policy and gaining traction was like really hard and I went to my first public comment and then no one from my school apart from the people on the board and the main staff that had to be there no one from my school came.

04:01
So it was a little nerve-wracking but you know another challenge I'm currently facing is how do I speed up the process right how do I get it into my school faster especially since like we recently had the accreditation visits happen at my school. It's been it's been like a tough month to get that to speed up. but yeah these challenges did present opportunities for growth and innovation in like the space of thinking differently and how to approach conversations and speeches so being a change maker means actively seeking solutions to pressing issues and striving to make a positive impact in the world and I would say start step by step because you can't immediately go and be like I'm going to make an impact on the world and immediately make that impact right because everything starts with one step right so take it step by step change makers or students who are interested in joining programs like CYCP is to stay curious stay persistent and stay open-minded and don't be afraid to voice your ideas and collaborate with others who share your passion for change.

05:24
If you want to go into environmental advocacy, you have to know your way around words. You have to know how to put something together, short, concise, but it gets your point across. If you don't know your way around words, start learning it because if environmental advocacy is one about implementing change but the other part is also how do I deliver it and how do I do it in such a way that keeps the audience engaged and not [unclear] so it's a matter of public speaking skills as well so I am committed to continuing my journey in environmental advocacy whether it's through volunteering so right now i volunteer at a non-profit and um it's called Green Silicon Valley um currently we just started a couple weeks back but what our initiative is trying to do is we're trying to spread like green energy into like knowledge of everyone and then i'm also volunteering at another nonprofit which is spreading like um different stem courses to um k-8 students and we're planning to i'm i'm planning to get my non-profit that's teaching k-8 students and stem um into making a curriculum for the school that can be taught so yeah Well, I'm still exploring my career options.

07:07
Environmentalism will always be a central aspect of my aspirations and goals. Currently, I'm trying to do something with science and tech combined. Something like biomedical engineering or software engineering. But I'm trying to see how can I make an environmental impact through those fields, which I'm really I think is a big prospect for my future. For me, personally, I've taken away the skill of how to talk to people that you wouldn't normally talk to.

07:46
How do you approach them?

07:48
You know, how do you get the idea on your mind?

07:51
And how to stay persistent. Oh, that's a big one. And how to stay persistent. Because if you're not persistent, you're not strong enough, you can't get through it. It's like you build that strength while you're in the program. That's something I've learned. You build the strength. The program takes you step by step. But if you don't double up the strength or don't care to, you're not going to work it out unless you learn it.