WITH CHRISTINA SELBY
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SFR: Christina, you're the program director and co-founder of Earth Care, a non-profit that provides sustainability education for young people. How did Earth Care get started?
CS:
Legally it was founded in 2001; we began working here in Santa Fe in '03. It was actually started by my husband and me. We traveled the entire West looking for where we wanted to have our home base and we chose Santa Fe.
Why did you choose Santa Fe?
I had friends here that had great things to say about it, and the coming together of the different cultures and the mountains, and we ended up meeting up with [Frances] Fiz Harwood, who founded Ecoversity, and she really encouraged us to come do some youth work here. She saw a need for it, so she helped us get started in the community.
One of your main projects here is the high school student-run One World Coffee Shop. What prompted the idea to focus on youth?
We had been really interested in sustainability, and when my husband, Taylor, and I were doing the trip across the country, we noticed the lack of youth in the conferences we went to, the organizations that we met with. I had worked with youth for a number of years in environmental education, so it just seemed like a niche that was needed. And sustainability is a very forward, future-oriented thing we're working toward-and if you don't include youth in that, the people who are going to be living in the world we're creating, I think it's a huge missed opportunity and addressing the wrong people.
You hear the word sustainability a lot in Santa Fe-what is your definition of that?
A short version is building a community and a quality of life in the community by addressing a balance between economic interest and concerns, the integrity of the environment and the natural world, [and] social justice issues. Sustainability is building a quality of life that works for everybody, with all cultures represented.
How does social justice relate to economic interest?
Within any society or community there are inherent systems of privilege, whether we like it or not, so if we don't directly look at that and include people from all different perspectives, we end up a lot of times developing a community that works for a dominant culture. So, say, at One World, it's pretty heavily Anglo, and the students are building a foundation of cultural consciousness so they can reach out to other communities.
So, say I'm craving a mocha. What are the differences between a sustainable mocha and a regular ol' mocha that will help me make a decision as to which to buy?
In a sustainable cup of mocha there are a number of levels. Ingredients: As much as possible, one would try to have local fair trade coffee-that being the economic part, so that people growing the coffee make a living wage. Maybe it's shade grown, to make sure the environment in the place it's grown is damaged less. If you can buy the milk at a local producer…We had to make a choice [at One World] between local and organic, because the local guy isn't fully certified organic. Local was the choice, because you're impacting the environment less with less transportation costs, and you're supporting the community by keeping money here.
There's also who's serving the cup, what are they getting paid, how are they treated in the workplace? What do they do with the waste; is it going to the landfill? At One World, they are trying to compost it and make products of the waste, to close the loop as much as possible.
Along the outreach line, how do you connect with people who aren't particularly interested in sustainability, who think it just means they're going to be paying $5 for a cup of coffee?
Pretty much anything that anyone cares about can be an entry point. People don't necessarily use the jargon, but there's something in their lives that will help them start to make the connections. Anybody who cares about their community and family can make the links.
You know, I had a conversation with someone at the Santa Fe Boys and Girls Club, and at first he didn't understand why he should care. [I explained it to him], and he was like 'Oh, OK, I get it. It's what my Grandpa used to do.' It just gets more complicated in the modern world.
So, let's say Gov. Bill Richardson comes to you and says, 'The State of New Mexico wants to give Earth Care $3 million for whatever you want.' What do you do with the money?
I think one of the best things would be to create a kind of teen action center, and to fund these great ideas that the kids have and put sustainability on the ground, to manifest the creative juices of what they learn. To put it toward being able to fund whatever initiative that the students would come up with, and to be able to fund other youth projects. And having a place [where] they come together, an intergenerational area, a fun place to be.
One World Coffee Shop is currently accepting applications from high school students who wish to work at the shop and learn about sustainability. For information on One World and other Earth Care projects, go to
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