Gearing Up for April!

Elevate Youth staff and volunteers took 9 new youthers from the Edison School to the Blue Hills this week for their first trip!

April is Earth Month! To especially mark Earth Day in 2023, Elevate Youth will partner with the Cambridge Mayor’s Office and the Morse school to clean up Revere Beach. Later, Fjallraven Seaport will host their raffle to benefit EY and our summer programming. At Elevate Youth, we celebrate and practice sustainability year-round. We make sustainable decisions behind-the-scenes every day, and share like-minded lesson plans to our youth during programming as well. Our staff role models habits of reusing and recycling and shares practical ways our youth can protect the earth. One way Elevate Youth especially minimizes our environmental impact is through our gear.

Much of the gear belonging to Elevate Youth is pre-used or donated by one of our community partners. This means we are keeping textiles and equipment out of landfills that would normally get thrown away. We repurpose and repair our gear and take care of it season-to-season to avoid creating waste and over-purchasing. Our staff takes time to explain how to use equipment safely and share why it is important to protect our gear. 

One of our main gear donors is the Patagonia company. Elevate Youth regularly receives child and adult based donations from Patagonia Boston and Patagonia Cambridge in the form of gently used clothing. Items such as winter coats, snow pants, and base layers are then shared with our youth. Depending on the item, our youth can borrow gear for just one outing, or can take home what they otherwise would not have. This winter we were proud to provide warm winter coats to every Elevate Youther who had previously gone without. 

This past winter, Elevate Youth ensured our youth could stay outside and stay warm through our yard sale. Families, community members, and friends walked away with hundreds of donated high-quality, low-cost items, giving each item another life. By sharing the opportunity to reuse gear with our network, we are setting an example and empowering our community to make future sustainable decisions. Read more about our yard sale here.

Elevate Youth uses our 15-passenger van to transport students on our trips because it reduces the amount of emissions families would normally use to drive kids individually. Traveling in one van means there are approximately 14 less cars on the road for every trip we run. Further, we have reusable Elevate Youth water bottles that kids borrow for the day and/or take home, to encourage plastic conservation even after our programming day has finished.

Elevate Youth is committed to sustainability with a goal to be carbon neutral by 2023, and one way we do this is through donated, used, and reused gear. Achieving this goal will make us one of the first Massachusetts nonprofits to be carbon neutral. We work with Emerger Strategies, a consulting service that provides a systems-thinking approach and helps Elevate Youth execute a cohesive sustainability strategy. We have conducted an extensive Strategic Sustainability Plan in order to effectively measure and improve our environmental, social and governance (ESG) over time. It is important to EY as a company to minimize our impact on the environment, and we are proud to commit to sustainable practices.

Elevate Youth is empowering the next generation of environmental stewards through sustainability! If you gently used outdoor gear that you would like to share with EY, please reach out to cam@elevate-youth.org. We will determine if we have a use for it and will get back to you soon. Thank you for supporting EY’s commitment to sustainability!