Envisioning Climate Just Futures

ArtHaus Works

2744 East 11th Street, 94601, Oakland, CA, United States

Mycelium Youth Network

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Mycelium Youth Network works to prepare frontline youth for hopeful and imaginative leadership climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience through hands-on ancestral approaches and STEAM that emphasize stewardship and relationship-building. Our north star is a world where all young people grow up grounded in cultural and ancestral alignment, dreaming beyond this current moment, resilient and adapted to organize, build power, and co-create climate just solutions in loving interdependence with people and the planet.Our theory of change is rooted in Indigeneity, grassroots feminism, cooperation, and the power of building place-based solutions and right reciprocal relationships between adults and young people. MYN’s evaluative structure uses an intergenerational and decolonized worldview to center the knowledge and wisdom of the youth that we organize. Drawing wisdom from the ecological systems that use iteration and collaboration, MYN youth leaders support the adaptation and design of the subsequent year’s cohort structure and design, which deepens our approach and rigor over time. Part and parcel of MYN’s approach is also how we offer young people the space and time to both learn and practice ways of being that support them with tapping into the power of rest (resistance) through ancestral and cultural connectivity.Embedded within all of our programming, MYN offers opportunities for youth to 1) experience safety and belonging; we co-create spaces of emotional, spiritual, political, and intellectual safety that supports community-building and facilitates experiences of belonging, 2) participate in building counter-narratives by challenging cultural hegemony and dominant narratives, and through building alternative cultural narratives; and 3) engage in praxis; creating theory, action, and reflection towards a regenerative cycle to understand their self, worldview, and conditions. MYN’s programming is a framework and model for how adults can co-create portals for young people to tend to their sense of self – to cultivate agency, build capacity, and deepen in self-efficacy as youth grow in their life journey towards building right relationships and solidarity for a just world.Throughout the academic year, MYN actively organizes twenty core youth participants on a weekly basis. Our broadest base of youth includes MYN’s core youth in addition to our digital organizing reach, youth alumni, coalitions, and movement partnerships. We currently operate four core NGSS-aligned programs within and across Bay Area public high schools:Climate Resilient Schools, Youth Leadership Council, Data Warriors, Gaming for Justice,and most recently we have launched our pilotLeadership in Storytellingcohort. From “Science for Survival” and “Clean Air is a Right” modules to Gaming for Justice, where students imagine just futures through collaborative fantasy role-playing games, we blend ancestral knowledge with STEAM learning to build frontline youth leadership in adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. Across all programs, MYN incorporates socio-emotional tools to address climate anxiety; cultural and ancestral practices and knowledge, participatory and community based research, youth-led data justice, storytelling and narrative building. Recent and upcoming youth projects include building a school water catchment system; creating and playing a live action role play game on a Bay Area shoreline; facilitating a multi-year toxic soil bioremediation at an Oakland high school; mobilizing youth to contribute to the City of Oakland’s first-ever General Plan Environmental Justice element; training youth as storytellers about local natural resources and our relationships to them on places like Oakland’s MLK Shoreline.During heightened moments of social and political awakening, MYN deepens our coordination with youth partner organizations. Previously this has resulted in the co-creation of a Youth Resilience Village, and a local campaign calling for the city to invest in policies that support the health and wellbeing of their communities, which included a series of demonstrations, mutual aid, and direct lobbying.To date, MYN’s advocacy and coordination with local institutions has included but not been limited to the City of Oakland, the Department of Planning, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Alameda County Public Health Department. One exciting and recent example is how MYN's Educational Director has been collaborating with a cohort of students with UC Berkeley's School of Public Health to offer guidance, mentorship, and collaborative design as they develop a public health program logic model that is shaped by MYN's vision, core values, and deepens existing program strategies. Over the course of a quarter, our Education Director has offered insights via interviews and document review to students' design of a universal guaranteed income program that layers on top of MYN internship program offerings as an approach of offering material support to mitigate climate anxiety and climate emergency preparedness. As of April 2025, Public Health students are finalizing their program design and will share their proposal with MYN staff. On the national front, our executive Director and Founder Lil Milagro Henriquez brings her expertise to the Advisory Board for the American Public Health Association's Center for Climate Health and Equity in addition to the National Academy of Medicine's Climate Communities Network.Mycelium Youth Network is an established 501c3 nonprofit organization. Our EIN is 85-0663137