Richard Glick and Ella Good measure a pollinator patch garden.
Lea la versión en inglés aquí. ELKHART, Indiana (Mennonite Church USA) — MC USA’s Climate Justice Ministry has selected two recipients and one honoree for the Generation Z Energy and Spirit Challenge. The award winners are Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship, Taftsville, Vermont and The Freeman Project, Freeman, South Dakota. Hillcrest Academy, Kalona, Iowa, has received an honorable mention.
The challenge was designed to inspire young people to actively care for the planet and respond to environmental needs through one of two categories: energy and spirit. Participants could include youth groups, young adult groups, mentor-mentee pairs and other intergenerational combinations involving at least two people, with at least one Gen Z member. Youth and young adults who attended MC USA’s Climate Summit during the 2023 MennoCon convention, were encouraged to enter the Generation Z Energy and Spirit Challenge.
Award winners will receive cash prizes, ranging from $500-$1,000, depending on group size, toward an outdoor experience that nourishes participants’ relationships with creation. Participants who will graduate from high school in the classes of 2024, 2025, 2026 or 2027, and who are accepted at an MC USA-affiliated school will receive a $1,000 Energy and Spirit Grant as part of their financial aid package.
“The projects our Generation Z Energy and Spirit Challenge participants imagined and carried out were truly inspiring,” said Karla Stoltzfus Detweiler, climate justice coordinator for MC USA. “From habitat restoration and tree planting to inviting community members to shop local and reduce their plastic consumption by using cloth shopping bags, their projects demonstrate that youth and young adults can be leaders for climate justice in their communities. MC USA’s Climate Justice Ministry prioritizes empowering young people to act with agency and hope in the face of climate change,” she added.
Taftsville Chapel Mennonite Fellowship, one of the two challenge award winners, received a cash prize and plans to use its money toward a trip to Bethany Birches Camp, Plymouth, Vermont, with the whole congregation. Their multi-generational and collaborative creation care project, inspired by the United Nations’ pledge to return 30% of the globe’s natural resources to protected status by the year 2030, involved assessing how much of the church property was currently being ‘conserved’ (10%) followed by brainstorming and planning how to move towards 30% being shared with other species over the next 6 years.
“It has been a beautiful coming together of our entire congregation around how we relate to land as the Spirit moves in our midst,” said Heather Wolfe, Taftsville Chapel’s creation care liaison. “There was enthusiastic participation in this lifegiving and energizing project. Shared practices and challenges through MCCN and now MC USA continue to encourage and inspire us to action around creation care and having a prize to work for added fuel and fun!”
The second award winner, The Freeman Project, was a “Shop Local” project and included printing and
Madelyn Anderson
selling cloth shopping bags with an informational brochure inside explaining how shopping locally reduces carbon emissions. The proceeds from bag sales were shared with the local food pantry, Bethany Food Pantry located at Bethany Mennonite Church. Mentee/mentor pair, Madelyn Anderson, a high school junior at Freeman Academy and Dennis Lehmann, an active member of the community, collaborated on the project. Anderson has applied to Bethel College, Newton, Kansas and plans to pursue a major in social work and a potential minor in clinical counseling studies, applying her $1,000 scholarship towards tuition costs. Anderson chose to give her $500 cash prize to the Freeman Arboretum.
“I’m really happy with the results of this project,” said Anderson. “I got to help a variety of people, the food pantry, local businesses and the environment.”
Named as an honorable mention, a class and teacher pair at Hillcrest Academy partnered to plant trees and grow food for their school in an orchard and a greenhouse. Mike Severino-Patterson, a biology teacher at Hillcrest Academy, worked with his spring 2024 Plant Science class to partner with the Iowa Department of Nature Resources and received a Trees for Schools grant which enabled them to plant trees on the school grounds.
L to R: Jeremiah Danker, Delaney Shaw, DNR Tree Technician Ellie Jones, Erin Bontrager, Siena Stanerson
The students that were part of the spring 2024 Plant Science class include Delaney Shaw, Erin Bontrager, Micah Gerber, Mason Helmuth, Kyle Neuschwander, Adrianne Blauvelt, Hailey Chalupa, Maria Portillo, Andrea Zabibu, Alessa Rivera, Jeremiah Danker, and Siena Stanerson.
One of the students, Erin Bontrager said, “We are planting trees that will hopefully live several hundred years, and so to that end, we are planting something that is beyond the scope of our lives and will hopefully be a sense of joy, peace and learning for generations to come.”
To learn more about MC USA’s Climate Justice Ministry, click here. To donate to MC USA’s Climate Justice Ministry, click here.
Written by Christle Hain.
Mennonite Church USA is an Anabaptist Christian denomination, founded in 2002 by the merger of the Mennonite Church and the General Conference Mennonite Church. Members of this historic peace church seek to follow Jesus by rejecting violence and resisting injustice. MC USA’s Renewed Commitments state the following shared commitments among its diverse body of believers: to follow Jesus, witness to God’s peace and experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit. Mennoniteusa.org