WildPlaces takes local teens on ‘eye-opening,' green-based trip

A small group of Granite Hills High School seniors received an invitation in April they couldn’t refuse — to attend an environmentalist awards event in San Francisco — for free.

Merissa Camerena, 18, Valarie Jasso, 17, Xjenay Peralta, 18, and Granite Hills library clerk Ann Garner accepted the invitation, not knowing what to expect.

“It was a real eye-opener,” Peralta said of being able to attend the ceremony. “I knew what we were doing to the environment, but I didn’t know how much it was effecting us.”

The ceremony took place at the Opera House in San Fransisco. Robert Redford, film director and founder of the Sundance Film Festival, was the special guest and announcer of the prize videos.

Pulitzer Prize winner Al Gore was the keynote speaker; singer and songwriter Tracy Chapman performed.

After the awards ceremony, attendees fled to the City Hall for a reception with the awardees.

“It was very swank,” Garner said of the scene at the reception. “It was just food, very high class.”

The 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize ceremony is a grand-scale connecting point for environmental grassroots leaders and groups from around the world that recognizes select individuals for their often dangerous and sometimes life-threatening work, Camerena and Peralta said.

The group from Granite Hills were joined by three students from La Sierra High. They went along for the trip with WildPlaces, a nonprofit group in Springville, committed to restoring and protecting California’s natural and rural lands through volunteer work.

WildPlaces provided transportation, food and lodging at the Fort Mason Hotel.

The organization, a vehicle for grassroots work in the Sierra mountains, receives tickets to the awards ceremony every year, and this year, WildPlaces Director Mehmet McMillan made a point to bring teens along for the experience, Garner said.

The Goldman Prize ceremony was followed by a brief program for the youth, and a chance to get up close and personal with an array of esteemed folks, including the event’s international award recipients.

The highlight of the trip was being exposed to the stories of passionate environmental leaders from around the world, they said. During the ceremony, each award presented was preceded by a short video about each of the recipients.

According to a book of short biographies on each of the winners, their environmentally concerned causes vary, and all relate to an aspect of the area in which they live.

One of this year’s winners was Marc Ona Essangui, a man from Libreville, Gabon, who led efforts to expose unlawful agreements behind a massive mining project that threatens critical equatorial rain forests, prevalent in his area.

A leading environmental attorney from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Rizwana Hasan led a legal battle to reduce the impact of Bangladesh’s environmentally devastating ship breaking industry, and secured increased government regulation for it.

A lifelong resident of Bob White, W.Va., in the heart of the Appalachians, Maria Gunnoe leads a growing campaign against mountaintop removal coal mining, in a county known for being one of the most active in the country in mountaintop removal, Garner said.

The other recipients come from Russia, Indonesia and Pikin Slee, a village of indigenous tribe people from Suriname in Africa.

At the reception, attendees also learned about some of the event’s past winners.

“Their work is so intense, some people have actually died,” Camerena said.

In previous years, “some couldn’t show up [to receive an award] because they were killed or in jail,” Peralta said.

Garner said, among this year’s winners, “it seemed like a lot of the stories had the central underlying theme of them being tortured,” when it came to each leader standing up for their cause.

One of the evening’s award recipients, Essangui, had been released from jail just before accepting his award.

The work of his non-government organization has been suspended and reinstated, while he has been arrested a number of times.

Gunnoe faced heavy opposition for her efforts, including threats to her life, and intimidating tactics from the Boone County mining industry.

“She was just so powerful,” Garner said of Gunnoe. “I saw the underlying theme [of most of the award winners’ stories] was how many recipients were bullied or threatened by corporations to stop their cause. It was basically a grassroots, something to save their neighborhood, and it was very specific.”

Another observation:

“I was pleasantly surprised with how many woman received awards,” Garner said.

Of seven 2009 award recipients, out of six cases — one of them featuring a male duo — four were women.

After attending the prize ceremony, Peralta said she has gained a new career option.

“I’ve always wanted to get into law, and I’ve been thinking, after seeing that, maybe defending environmentalists,” she said.

Camerena, who has held an interest in photography, said she is considering becoming a nature and environmental photographer.

One of the reasons she said she went on the trip in the first place was to gain new ideas for possible occupations.

Garner said the idea the event aimed to drive home for its attendees was the importance of getting involved to take care of the environment.

“Getting more involved in our own grassroots area and keeping it local — I think that was a big part of the program,” Garner said. “There’s a lot going on in the world, but what can you do at home?”

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