Students from across Colorado clambered onto chairs in the community hall of Carbondale’s Third Street Center on Friday, laughing and acting like monkeys. 

It was the first morning of the inaugural Colorado Youth Climate Summit, and they were playing a chaotic round of “Simon Says.”

Tilly Testa, a Boulder Valley School District student and co-president of Fairview High School’s Sunrise club — part of the national Sunrise Movement — stood on stage, laughing into her microphone while throwing increasingly ridiculous commands at the crowd of around 80 high school students. 

Simon says spin in circles. Simon says take your shoes off and expose your “dogs,” then stand on your chair and drop your phone on the ground, she called out. Only three students played along with that final command. 

The short, energetic game wasn’t just a brain break after a sobering “Climate 101” presentation by Colorado State Climatologist Russ Schumacher. It was a smart, theatrical lesson about power — who has it and how they get it — by Testa and her co-presenter, Fairview Sunrise co-president Rylan Neumann.

“People don’t inherently have power, you give them power,” Testa told the crowd once the game ended. “You all gave me power when you were doing what I said in the beginning, but by the end, the majority of you had sat down and I didn’t have any power anymore.”

The first of many youth-led activities during the two-day summit, Testa and Neumann’s presentation was a crash course on how high schoolers can use their agency to spark change in a world that’s “all messed up,” as Testa put it. 

Like many in the audience, Glenwood Springs High School junior Zenobia Todd said the presentation left a lasting impression. 

“How the two girls on the stage presented how much of a difference they’ve made in their school and in their community, it made me feel like I could do that too,” Todd said. 

Inspiring others to make a difference was one of the core goals of the inaugural Colorado Youth Climate Summit, funded by Lyra and organized in partnership with Wild Rose Education.

Cedar Barg, Wild Center Climate Network Manager and a summit workshop leader, has attended around 20 youth climate summits across the country. They traveled from Burlington, Vermont to Carbondale for Colorado’s inaugural event, which was modeled after the Wild Center’s program in New York.

Barg sees summits like Colorado’s as the beginning of a journey for the passionate, motivated and climate-focused students who attend. 

“I see youth climate summits as the spark for a lot of students to see that they’re not alone in climate work,” Barg said. “To get exposure to experts who are working on this in their communities, who they might be able to actually see as a mentor or maybe they see themselves in that future career path.”

“And really as an idea generator,” they added. “I think that’s what the purpose of the summit is, to ignite that passion, and maybe they already have it, but it fans the flame.”

Although students came to the summit from different towns, grades and schools, their core motivation for attending was the same — to learn how to help the world.

Glenwood Springs High School junior Addison Godes served as a youth summit leader alongside her classmate Allie Allred and seven others.  

“Ultimately, the reason I decided to become a leader in the summit was because the climate change issue is very important to me,” she said. “I wanted to do something that I felt could make a difference, however small.”

Rhyianna Banks, a senior at Fountain-Fort Carson High School and president of the school’s Green Sustainability Club, discovered her passion for climate justice after watching natural disasters tear through her old neighborhood in Louisiana. 

“I grew up in a poor neighborhood,” Banks said in a joint interview with junior classmate Aden Kirby. “It was always way too hot or way too stormy. Then eventually a hurricane came through and wrecked almost my entire neighborhood, and I think that’s why I became more interested in climate justice and things of that nature.”

Climate issues caught Kirby’s attention around five years ago.

“When the media started talking more and more about the impacts that we’ve been having on our climate, it made me want to try and help make some sort of impact,” Kirby, now the sustainability club’s vice president, said. “Whether that be a small impact, just cleaning something for our town, or making a bigger impact that could hopefully affect more than just our town.” 

Both Banks and Kirby said they plan to bring what they learned at the summit back to their high school and use it to inspire both new and returning club members. 

As Yampah Mountain High School science teacher and summit youth leader advisor Monika Okula told the Post Independent last week, “The sense of learning doesn’t end at the classroom door. It’s going to flow into rivers, farms, food systems and future careers.”