Our teen-to-teen environmental series, “Tips for a Sustainable Planet” grew out of partnership between Shine On Chicago and CTVN, The Community Television Network, and our desire to affect teens’ thinking about sustainability for the environment and our planet’s future.

Because it’s the younger generation that will inherit our planet, we wanted to talk to them. Unfortunately, because they’ve been inundated with Climate Change “dis-information” for such a long time, they think it’s “totally boring” and shut down whenever the subject comes up.

The other issue is that they think the problem is so big — they can’t really do anything to personally affect it. So how do we begin to affect change if the target demo doesn’t want to listen anymore?

Because I’m a big believer in teen-to-teen learning — we thought that developing a series of short videos that have teens talking to teens in ways they can relate, and hopefully to help change their thinking about sustainability and the environment.

The series grew organically out of topics that the teens brought to our attention — because they were interested in them. The videos we created, “Teens Eating Healthy” and “Too Many Straws”, grew out of sustainability subjects they researched and explored.

As a result, the videos — because they were written, researched and presented by teens — have a degree of authenticity that managed to engage this audience and let them hear the message clearly: there are things teens can do now to create a more sustainable planet. So don’t wait, make changes now!

Below are the videos created so far for the series, and some photos of the teens in their process.

And if after watching these videos and seeing the teens in action, you'd like to support this worthy cause, please donate using the button below.