Under 18 in Columbia/HoCo

 

Wait, what?

I did a double take when these photos from the Youth Climate Institute account caught my eye on Instagram.

You may recall that the Youth Climate Institute is an initiative of the Howard County Conservancy.  The post I came across relates recent activities related to grant support from the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

We're so grateful to @chesapeakebaytrust for awarding The Youth Climate Institute a Healthy Environment, Healthy Communities grant to support four Baltimore chapters in the 2025-2026 school year! Thanks to this generous funding, we were able to provide stipends and action project funding to @sparrowspoinths, @watershedpcs, @official_baltimorepoly, and Academy for College and Career Exploration. Together, these four chapters:

- Raised an additional $2,000 in grant funding

- Installed 16 raised beds

- Installed 42 native plants

- Collected 45 large bags of litter across several clean-up events throughout Baltimore (estimated 1,000 bs)

- Positively impacted 2,500+ Baltimore residents

Thank you CBT for continuing to invest in the next generation of climate leaders!

This is why I did a double take:

My brain interpreted that body language as “young person looking at cellphone.” It isn’t. What she’s holding is…okay, I don’t know what she’s holding but it’s definitely not a cellphone. What we see is hands-on exploration of the natural world and not disconnected scrolling. And I almost missed it because I thought I knew what I was seeing.

UPDATE: Thanks to an astute reader, I now know that the object in question is an oyster. 

I suspect that the Youth Climate Institute helps young people see things they had never been looking for before, so - - why not me?

*****

In the “not a crime, but I’m scratching my head” category: 

The Columbia Association is holding a Tiny Town Hall on August 11th.

The future of our community starts with our youngest voices! We're looking for the little people with the big voices to join CA's first Tiny Town Hall.

CA invites children entering 3rd-5th grade to share their ideas, dreams, and big thoughts about their community.

Through games, conversation, and creative activities, we'll hear what matters most to our youngest residents and help shape a community where everyone belongs.

Tiny Town Hall. 

In my experience both as a teacher and as a parent 3rd-5th graders do not consider themselves “tiny” and might very well be turned off by this framing. Maybe you could get away with it for preschoolers?

Why would you tell young people you want to know their ideas and that you are really going to take them seriously and then call them tiny?

Probably because someone thought it was cute.

I rest my case.

*****

There’s a new bus in town. 

From the Howard County Department of Resources & Services:

Serving children and youth across 6 different summer programs, the Community Connector helps reduce the cost of transportation and remove transportation as a barrier to participate in programs funded by Howard County Department of Community Resources and Services' Office of the Local Children's Board (OLCB).

OLCB and its partner, @hococac launched the pilot program as a safe, organized way to provide transportation support for Howard County youth that can continue serving our community well into the future. 

A lack of transportation shouldn’t prevent kids from participating in summer programs. Removing obstacles to access means they can experience  a summer that’s designed to be safe, active, and fun. And young people bring those positive experiences with them as they grow and as they return to school in the Fall.

What a wonderful idea this is.

*****

My own kids are grown and frankly I wish they’d come and create a fun summer camp for me personally but that’s not how it works. I guess that the reason I continue to look for ways our community supports young people is that my career in education means I’ll always be a teacher at heart. Or possibly I’m just a great big kid.

Village Green/Town² Comments