Climate Change Recovery works with key environmental nonprofits and is working to bring the United Nations sponsored nonprofit Plant for the Planet to more areas in order to support youth training other youth in Climate Science and Climate Justice!

Plant for the Planet Update!

Join us for one of our upcoming Academies, or invite us to your area!

August 12, 2017 —  Portland, Oregon
October 7, 2017 — Sacramento, California
October 22, 2017 — Tigard, Oregon
November 18, 2017 — Salem, Oregon

Saturday, August 12, 2017 — Portland, Oregon—The Nature Academy!

Tryon Life Community Farm is our host! This Academy will be led by Ambassadors Isaac and Miko Vergun, Program Coordinator Pam Vergun, and possibly other Ambassadors as well. Ambassadors? Want to apply to help lead it? Contact Pam.

Academies are free and open to all students.

To register for this Academy, please click here: Student Registration – August 12, 2017 – Portland, Oregon.

If you would like to register as an adult volunteer or as an Ambassador to lead this Academy, please click here: Volunteer Registration – August 12, 2017 – Portland, Oregon.

Saturday, October 7, 2017 — Sacramento, California—Our (almost) First California Academy!

350 Sacramento is our host! This Academy will be led by Ambassadors Isaac and Miko Vergun, Program Coordinator Pam Vergun, and possibly other Ambassadors as well. Ambassadors? Want to apply to help lead it? Contact Pam.

Academies are free and open to all students.

To register for this Academy, please click here: Student Registration – October 7, 2017 – Sacramento, California.

If you would like to register as an adult volunteer or as an Ambassador to lead this Academy, please click here: Volunteer Registration – October 7, 2017 – Sacramento, California.

Sunday, October 22, 2017 — Tigard, Oregon—Our First Academy with MET—the Muslim Education Trust!

The Muslim Education Trust (MET) is our host! This Academy will be led by Ambassadors Isaac and Miko Vergun, Program Coordinator Pam Vergun, and possibly other Ambassadors as well. Ambassadors? Want to apply to help lead it? Contact Pam.

Academies are free and open to all students.

To register for this Academy, please click here: Student Registration – October 22, 2017 – Tigard, Oregon.

If you would like to register as an adult volunteer or as an Ambassador to lead this Academy, please click here: Volunteer Registration – October 22, 2017 – Tigard, Oregon.

Here’s a flyer about the Academy to share with your friends—get them signed up, too!

Plant for the Planet Flyer – MET – Oct 22 2017

Saturday, November 18, 2017 — Salem, Oregon—with 350 Salem!

350 Salem is our host! This Academy will be led by Ambassadors Isaac and Miko Vergun, Program Coordinator Pam Vergun, and possibly other Ambassadors as well. Ambassadors? Want to apply to help lead it? Contact Pam.

Academies are free and open to all students.

To register for this Academy, please click here: Student Registration – November 18, 2017 – Salem, Oregon.

If you would like to register as an adult volunteer or as an Ambassador to lead this Academy, please click here: Volunteer Registration – November 18, 2017 – Salem, Oregon.

Want to learn more about Plant for the Planet?

For a quick introduction to Plant for the Planet, check out this report on the evening news about an Academy—Plant for the Planet’s one-day training session for youth—by Ellen Meny, KVAL Multimedia Journalist. Share it with your friends! KVAL Local Evening News—Children Get a Kid-Friendly Crash Course on Climate Change

Next, check out our flyer about Plant for the Planet Academies—download and share it: Sample Plant for the Planet Flyer – English-Spanish bilingual – general

Then, for an easy way to keep up on what we’re doing and help us get the word out to your friends, follow:
a) this blog,
b) our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ClimateChangeRecovery/, or
c) our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/climatechangerecovery/.
For now, Facebook is your best bet for the most recent updates, though!

Climate Justice Ambassador Miko Vergun is Giving Presentations on the U.S. Nuclear Legacy and Climate Change in the Marshall Islands—
Invite her to speak at your organization!

Interviewed for an in-depth piece on KBOO Community Radio about her presentations at the International School of Beaverton and the Jewish Renewal congregation P’nai Or of Portland, Miko is working to raise awareness about the U.S. nuclear testing—and continued military presence—in the Marshall Islands, as well as the impact of the mostly-U.S.-induced Climate Change in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and elsewhere. For more information, check out the flyer from her April 1, 2017 presentation sponsored by P’nai Or.

As she described in her interview, Miko is a Climate Justice Ambassador with Plant-for-the-Planet who this year was elected as the Global Youth Board Representative for North America and Oceania. She participated in the Plant-for-the-Planet Youth Summit in October-November 2016 in Augsburg, Germany. Miko is also a Teen Board Member of the Oregon Jewish Community Youth Foundation (OJCYF) and was honored by the Oregon Marshallese Community (OMC), REACH-MI (Radiation Exposure Awareness Crusaders for Humanity—Marshall Islands), and MEI (the Marshallese Education Institute) for contributing to the Marshallese community at the 2016 Nuclear Legacy Summit. She is one of the 21 Climate Kids–a plaintiff in the federal Climate Change lawsuit Juliana vs. U.S. through the help of Our Children’s Trust.

Contact vergun@alumni.stanford.edu to schedule a presentation.

More about Climate Change Recovery

This site highlights the work of Plant for the Planet youth Ambassadors for Climate Justice and their families and friends in our area. It has grown out of the work of one family (Pam, Rob, Miko, and Isaac Vergun) and their friends and acquaintances—together with nonprofits like Our Children’s Trust, Plant for the Planet, Climate Change for Families, and 350.org—on Climate Change and Recovery.

If you would like a longer glimpse of what an Academy is like, watch this lovely excerpt from the documentary work of filmmaker Michael Werner:

Here is a quick video about the international organization Plant for the Planet so you can learn more about us:

Portland-area Academy:

We are working on plans and will likely have another Portland-area Academy, but don’t wait! Sign up for one of the others if you can, and then you can help at one of the next ones! Stay tuned for details!

We also now have a Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/ClimateChangeRecovery/ , and you can also check out more on Pam Vergun’s own Facebook page. Be sure to like our ClimateChangeRecovery page too while you’re there!

We also post Academies on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ClimateChangeRecovery/.

Other News:

Our work just appeared in the magazine Oregon Jewish Life in an article highlighting Isaac’s Bar Mitzvah Project! Do check it out: Bar Mitzvah Pursues Climate Recovery.

What is a Bar or Bat or B’nei Mitzvah and why is this on a site about Climate Change?

More on this later, but briefly, the phrases are ways of referring to “Children of the Commandments”, and in Jewish tradition, when a child takes on many of the responsibilities of an adult at about age 13, they are expected to do “Mitzvah”, which are “commandments”, sometimes called “good deeds”.

This site grew out of our family’s work as Miko and Isaac started working on their B’nei Mitzvah Projects to help protect our planet with the help of their Mom, Pam, and their Dad, Robert Vergun. We will be getting more up on this site soon on how we have been working in Oregon and neighboring areas to help stop Climate Change, but in the meantime you’ll find most of what you need at the following two sites.

So, what are the four coolest—and likely most effective—nonprofits working on Climate Change and Recovery?

Our votes are for:

• 350.org (of course!)
• Our Children’s Trust
• Plant for the Planet
• Our Climate (formerly Oregon Climate)

350.org News!

Thanks to volunteering with 350.org and 350PDX, luck, and two friends, we are delighted on October 12, 2015, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, to be joining many others in Portland in welcoming Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis to the first Portland screening of This Changes Everything at the Hollywood Theater! Thank you, Harriet Cooke and Robert Vergun for your volunteer fundraising with 350PDX that won us the tickets!

For those of you who didn’t get tickets to this special showing with Director Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, make sure to get to the second showing at the same location on October 20. You can buy tickets here.

Isaac is continuing to work with 350.org’s Fossil Free and the City of Beaverton on the campaign to have them fully Divest from Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power. Wherever you live, please sign Isaac’s petition:

Our Children’s Trust is a dedicated legal team devoted to protecting our Planet, our children and communities, and our future generations through applying legal principals so that governments and other entities will act regarding Climate Change as they should. Remember Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court Ruling that pointed out what now should seem obvious—that segregated schools are not equal?

Well, if we have a right to education, surely we have a right to a Planet in good shape. The rights to life, liberty, property (and to the pursuit of happiness) depend upon a safe and functioning global ecosystem.

The first major hearing for this case is on March 9, 2016 in Eugene–come join us or watch it live at the courthouse in Portland by special arrangement!

So, follow Our Children’s Trust and the cases they are working on all over, especially our Federal lawsuit, Kelsey Juliana & Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh M., et al. v. United States & President Barack Obama, et al. Please consider donating to this effort! Here’s a glimpse of some of the 21 youth plaintiffs—which include Miko and Isaac:

Please ask your local and internet media to carry more stories about these lawsuits and about the urgency of addressing Climate Change.

Plant for the Planet and Climate Change for Families!

Plant for the Planet was founded in 2007 by nine year old Felix Finkbeiner and has already empowered more than 34,000 children worldwide in 193 countries to stop Climate Change with science, leadership, and planting trees. They have planted 14 billion; their goal is 1,000 billion by 2020. We all need to help!

Climate Change for Families was founded in 2013 to bring the work of Plant for the Planet to the U.S., beginning in Washington State. It is now working with Climate Change Recovery in Oregon and with other organizations to give children in more states and countries the opportunity to protect and change our future.

Climate Change for Families has already led several Academies inspiring children to serve the Pacific Northwest as Ambassadors for Climate Justice. For more information focused on the Northwest, especially Washington State, visit: ClimateChangeforFamilies.com.

After the Academy, we work together in Plant for the Planet clubs and as members of Earth Guardians Crews. Hundreds of children and their communities in the Northwest have been inspired to act, planting thousands of trees at home and abroad.

Just as important, Climate Change for Families and Plant for the Planet have trained these children and youth to advocate for our future with everyone from their friends to elected officials. In 50 countries, children have become Climate Justice Ambassadors at free one-day Academies. In addition to this site, learn more about Plant for the Planet at https://www.plant-for-the-planet.org/en/home.

The interrelated goals of Climate Change for Families/Plant for the Planet are to:

1) Have youth educate their communities on Climate Change & Climate Recovery,

2) Empower youth to work with elected and other officials to change Climate-related policy,

3) Reduce carbon use and plant trees to decrease CO2 and other greenhouse gases emissions.

As mentioned above, we now have another Plant for the Planet Academy in Oregon scheduled, in part thanks to Michael Foster at Climate Change for Families. So, please put it on your calendars and let others know! We are in the final stage of setting the date for a couple more Academies–so check back soon–or better yet, like and follow this blog!

In early September 2015, Climate Change for Families was chosen as the newest Tzedakah Partner by P’nai Or of Portland! (Tzedakah means Justice.) Thank you, P’nai Or, for your support!