Come together to kick off the conference weekend, meet your peers, and enjoy a great meal. Hosted by Jada Imani, Kayla Douglas and Weaving Earth.Come together to kick off the conference weekend, meet your peers, and enjoy a great meal. Hosted by Jada Imani, Kayla Douglas and Weaving Earth.

Gen Z has come of age in a world fraught with systemic injustice, a looming climate emergency, and constant attacks on democracy itself. With a generational psyche bred online, young people are able to communicate, learn, organize, and take action in ways never seen before. Maxx Fenning, founder and President of PRISM, a nonprofit organization that works to expand access to LGBT-inclusive education and sexual health resources for young people in South Florida, discusses his experiences standing on the shoulders of a decades-long fight for LGBT rights and how to help pass on the torch to this new wave of young activists.

This will be a hands-on art-making workshop co-led by youth facilitators. We will engage in the creation of a Singing Tree Mural from start to finish during the conference. It will be the 107th Singing Tree mural for a forest of trees made by over 21,000 people from 52 countries. We will also learn about the neurobiology and eco-based approach of the “Peace Building Through Art” program as we work. Paint clothes will be provided. Hosted by Laurie Marshall, founder of Unity Through Creativity Foundation and The Singing Tree Project. Facilitated by Lili Lopez, certified Singing Tree Facilitator and Bisi Obateru, Nigerian musician and artist, with student facilitators: Jerwey Guo, co-leader, Restorative Justice Singing Tree; Serena Ornelas, co-creator, Ukrainian Singing Tree of Strength and Freedom; Amanda Panoplos, co-creator, The Lemon Cherry Singing Tree of Peace.)

Bioneers is inherently a community of mentors; people eager to learn, share, explore and create together. The “Community of Mentors” space at Bioneers offers youth the opportunity to be in small group mentoring sessions with Bioneers presenters. The presenters will share their life experience in an interactive dialogue with youth who are seeking guidance on their path to activism. With Shilpa Jain, Executive Director of YES!, who has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings around the world with hundreds of young leaders from over 80 countries. Facilitated by Lauren Dalberth Hage and Dave Hage of Weaving Earth.

Come join Samara Gaev and members of the Truthworker Theatre Company in a dynamic, interactive workshop that will call upon modalities of theater, writing, storytelling and collaboration to unpack pressing issues in our communities, including: trauma, healing, power, privilege, inequity and social justice. Drawing from Augusto Boal’s renowned “Theatre of the Oppressed” pedagogy, the workshop will offer community members, educators, activists, and organizers tools for leveraging stories that so often go untold, as well as tools for engaging their constituencies. Sourcing the collective wisdom in the room, we will creatively cultivate a brave space for radical self reflection, testimony, systems analysis, community building, and the articulation of our visions for change. Truthworker Theatre Company will also be catalyzing this workshop with an original performance excerpted from their provocative trilogy, which depicts the prison industrial complex through the lens of a dozen youth directly impacted by mass incarceration.

How is our queerness, our gender blessing, and/or our identity a portal to ancient truths and liberated futures? Who are we and who are we becoming? Where do our identities intersect with movements for justice and flourishing? Come gather together in a ritual space for speaking our experiences and beholding one another in a space dedicated for LGBTQ2SIA+ folx. Hosted by Solace Pesach of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education.

Truthworker Theatre Company, directed by Samara Gaev, uses rhyme, hip-hop theater, dance, multimedia, cutting edge technology, and personal testimony to raise awareness and inspire deeper critical engagement. In this special performance for Bioneers, the company will perform excerpts from its provocative trilogy that depicts the prison industrial complex through the lens of a dozen youth directly impacted by mass incarceration, viscerally engaging with such themes as the school-to-prison pipeline, youth criminalization, the impacts of solitary confinement, and the challenges of re-entry into society. Truthworker’s deeply personal performances center redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility to humanize those most negatively impacted by systemically unjust and racist policies.

As we strive to rebuild a better future, we have to acknowledge and appreciate the efforts our ancestors contributed in the past. In this workshop, participants will be challenged to think of ways they want to reflect on efforts in the past while rebuilding their future. To build a sustainable future, we need to dismantle the foundational systems of oppression and replace them with ones rooted in equity and sustainability, but to do that we have to recognize the efforts made in the past. In this workshop we will be discussing this idea and creatively writing and imagining a world where this is true and what it takes to get there.

Bioneers is inherently a community of mentors; people eager to learn, share, explore and create together. The “Community of Mentors” space at Bioneers offers youth the opportunity to be in small group mentoring sessions with Bioneers presenters. The presenters will share their life experience in an interactive dialogue with youth who are seeking guidance on their path to activism. With Alixa García, an award-winning poet, climate organizer and filmmaker, as well as a visual artist, musician, science-fiction writer and essayist. Facilitated by Lauren Dalberth Hage and Dave Hage of Weaving Earth.

Youth take center stage, grab the mic and share their talents to express their traumas and triumphs at this open forum hosted by R&B, hip hop artist and community organizer, Jada Imani.

This will be an evening of art, music, and conversation for the LGBTQ2SIA+ community. With celebration and conviviality, we will celebrate the ongoing legacies of brilliance and resilience of queer liberation and intersecting struggles for justice. Come gather to nourish our connections and imagine new possibilities. This is a space dedicated for LGBTQ2SIA+ folx, but allies are welcome. Hosted by Solace Pesach of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education.

What is the role of youth of color in environmental and social movements? The Youth of Color Caucus is a safe space and open forum where youth of color have an opportunity to sit, listen to one another and share the real issues that come with holding their identities in social and environmental movements as well as in the world at large. Facilitated by Brandi Mack along with youth leaders Alondra Aragon and Minkah Smith.

Building power and achieving success in the global youth climate movement require international solidarity, communication, and organizing. Relationships with allied groups and organizations are key to making change. An international youth organizer since the age of 13, Alexandria Villaseñor shares the unique ways in which a multicultural, geographically distributed youth movement is building trust, negotiating compromises, distributing decision-making and centering the stories, experiences and leadership of those most impacted in each action and campaign. From grassroots movements to national organizations, Alexandria will show us how youth intend to win the climate fight by working together.

This workshop will be led by youth who have been trained to facilitate restorative justice circles throughout the greater community of Oakland, California. They will discuss/explain what these healing circles look like and what it has done for them on a personal level. Our RJOY Youth Interns provide healing spaces that are infused with art and therapeutic modalities that allow its circle participants to feel safe, heard, and supported. Many young people do not have safe spaces to talk about things that they cannot necessarily share with their parents or authority figures. Restorative Justice healing circles provide that space free of judgment, ridicule, or being exposed to more trauma when showing a true sense of vulnerability.

Bioneers is inherently a community of mentors; people eager to learn, share, explore and create together. The “Community of Mentors” space at Bioneers offers youth the opportunity to be in small group mentoring sessions with Bioneers presenters. The presenters will share their life experience in an interactive dialogue with youth who are seeking guidance on their path to activism. With Samara Gaev, founder and Artistic Director of Truthworker Theatre Company, activist, educator, theater director and performer with 16 years’ experience using performance for cross-cultural healing and social change. Facilitated by Lauren Dalberth Hage and Dave Hage of Weaving Earth.

This final session in the Youth Space is dedicated to reflection and incorporation. Together, we will consider some key questions: What is it you are taking with you? How will you integrate what you have experienced at Bioneers into your life? How can Bioneers expand and improve its youth programming to support you further on your path? What would be helpful to have witnessed by peers and mentors before you head home? All youth are welcome to attend and engage in the conversation! Facilitated by the Bioneers Youth Leadership Program Coordination team from Weaving Earth.