New Earth Guardians Crew for PVCC

Charles Stish, assistant editor

One of the newest student organizations on PVCC’s campus this semester is Earth Guardians. According to their website, “Earth Guardians began as an accredited high school in Maui, Hawaii in 1992, focusing on environmental awareness and action in its core curriculum.” Their goal was to teach students and youth about local negative environmental impacts in their area.

The organization now has crews around the world from Africa to Australia who get local youth involved in helping the environment.  With the efforts of PVCC student Kibiriti Majuto and several PVCC faculty and staff members, Earth Guardians has established a new, PVCC-based Charlottesville crew.

“With protecting our future, we are looking at local environmental issues in Charlottesville like water problems and recycling issues. At Piedmont, we are looking for what isn’t right in terms of environmental issues and seeing what we can do to fix them,” said Majuto, a Charlottesville High School graduate and nine-month member of Earth Guardians. Majuto is also a council member of Rising Youth for a Sustainable Earth (RYSE) and a board member of Charlottesville’s Center for Peace and Justice.

“I was big into human rights issues and was looking for an effective movement or organization that could establish strong changes. Environmental issues interested me and I was trying to figure out what I could do to make a change, so I joined Earth Guardians,” said Majuto.

During his senior year of high school, Majuto became involved with Earth Guardians and began to work on creating a PVCC Earth Guardian crew, as he would be enrolling in PVCC after high school. Contacting the only faculty member he knew at PVCC at the time, Majuto asked Assistant Professor of Political Science Connie Jorgensen for aid in accomplishing his goal. Jorgensen recommended him to PVCC’s Director of Student Success and Retention David Lerman found an interested PVCC faculty member to be the club’s faculty advisor.

Kristina Simpkins, a Student Success advisor, accepted the position and her and Majuto worked with PVCC’s Coordinator of Student Engagement and Student Life, Shawn Anderson, to officially establish the Earth Guardian’s Crew in PVCC’s community.

“We as youth have so much power and so much potential in the time we are living in. We are so interconnected we can have friends in China and know what is happening around the world. We can learn and know how to stop these negative environmental changes in the world. We are indigenous to our planet and the effects we are putting on this Mother Earth can be detrimental to our future and we have got to protect our future,” said Majuto.

PVCC’s Earth Guardian Crew plans on partnering with other local environmental groups throughout its time at PVCC.

Anyone interested in getting involved should contact the Earth Guardians club via their email at pvccearthcrew@gmail.com.

Anyone wanting to research Earth Guardians in its entirety can visit their webpage at https://www.earthguardians.org/pof/