For Anna Birchok, a sophomore at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, caring about the environment has always been second nature. Growing up attending protests with her parents and learning about young activists like Greta Thunberg, Birchok has recognized the importance of environmental advocacy from a young age. For Pioneer high school junior Elif Saglik, on the other hand, her involvement in sustainability work became pronounced only in high school, shortly before she joined with Birchok to co-found Youth Now Climate Action, an organization entirely focused on youth environmental action and education. Now co-facilitators of Youth Now Climate Action (YNCA), Birchok and Saglik empower the youth in the Ann Arbor area to rise up and take action alongside them, inspiring peers and younger students to care about the environment.

YNCA is a newly founded teen-lead organization committed to educating youth in the Ann Arbor area about the environment and otherwise taking direct action towards mitigating the climate crisis. Founded in 2024, YNCA is a collaboration between the Leslie Science and Nature Center, A²ZERO, and the Neutral Zone. YNCA meets at the Neutral Zone, an Ann Arbor teen space that hosts a variety of different events and programs. YNCA was initially founded to replace GreensGroup, a youth climate organization that died off during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Now, though, YNCA has grown into something new and unique. When Anna Birchok, already involved at Neutral Zone, found out that they were looking for a founding cohort for YNCA, she was eager to get involved. A freshman at the time, she initially thought she might be too young for leadership. Ultimately, though, Birchok stepped up, despite her age.

“We went in, and it was kind of hard for the first bit because we had a lot of trouble getting people,” Birchok said.

Initially, only five to eight participants came to most meetings. However, slowly but surely, the number of participants began to grow. Now, the organization has approximately thirty participants.

“We’ve just done a lot of outreach,” Birchok said.

From close friends to strangers, Birchok has initiated countless conversations with peers to encourage them to get involved with YNCA, and her work has paid off. Gradually, she and the other founding members of YNCA have created a strong cohort of eager teens from various different schools and grades. Despite only existing for one year, the group’s past projects have managed to cover a wide range of different areas. Most have zeroed in on educating the youth in Ann Arbor. Saglik loves seeing how YNCA’s educational projects influence the kids they work with.

“Being able to see new youth learn about the environment and become interested in it through our group is really interesting,” Saglik said. “The main point of our group is to unite youth to learn about the environment.”

According to Saglik, although many teens and younger children already care about the environment to a certain extent, they don’t know how to channel that into truly taking care of the earth. One of YNCA’s largest recent projects involved hydroponics, a method of growing plants in water enriched with nutrients.

“We went into Community High School, which is where I go, and then kids got to take home this lettuce that they grew themselves at school, which was really fun,” Birchok said. “We also did some hydroponics for the A²Zero Green Fair, which is an event in Ann Arbor.”

Getting community members involved in a fun, hands-on way connects them with nature in an environmentally aware manner that has proved to be a successful, low-pressure strategy to bring youth into environmental work. Other past projects have included running informative tables at children’s events and training community members on how to ride the city bus and why public transportation is beneficial for the environment. Currently, Birchok, Saglik, and the rest of YNCA are in the process of launching a brand new project, their most ambitious one yet.

“We’re trying to do rain garden presentations at elementary schools around the area,” Saglik said. “We hope to use all our funds that we’ve raised to actually make rain gardens at… the elementary schools.”

Rain gardens are designed to absorb rainwater while limiting runoff and nourishing a beautiful garden filled with plants and flowers. YNCA wants to continue their overarching project of educating the community by paying multiple visits to elementary schools over an extended period of time, teaching students to help plan, build, and keep up rain gardens, before actually executing the construction of real rain gardens on school property.

“We are hoping to work with the students there to have them give us ideas and feedback,” Birchok said.

That will include allowing students to choose what native species to plant, as well as working with students to make a “Bee-ware of Bees” sign to emphasize the ecological importance of bees and explain how to coexist with their buzzing roommates who will be sure to appear in the rain gardens.

YNCA members hope that their rain garden project will be a gift that keeps giving. The nature of a rain garden is to be self-sufficient once it’s started, so elementary schoolers for years to come will be able to enjoy the beauty of the garden and the educational nature of signs accompanying it.

“This way, we’ll build something that hopefully makes an impact,” Birchok said.

Saglik is passionate about youth getting involved in environmental youth, within and outside of YNCA.

“Climate change is already so much worse than they thought it would be and the only way that we’re going to be able to… mitigate the effects of it is if we can enlist younger people to start caring about,” she said. “We’re the ones that will be living on this earth in like thirty years, and it’s important that we learn how to take care of it now.”

One rain garden at a time, one hydroponics-grown salad at a time, one conversation at a time, YNCA will remain dedicated to that principle. After just a year of existence, Saglik, Birchok, and the other teens of YNCA have already educated countless community members and enlisted numerous youth like themselves into the battle for a just and healthy environment. YNCA leaders have experienced a profound impact on their own involvement in environmental work, in addition to others, since founding the group.

“I’d always cared about the environment, but I came in last year and now it’s like all I do,” said Birchok, whose work with YNCA has inspired her to consider pursuing a degree in environmental science. “It really makes an impact on people.”

As Birchok and Saglik look into the coming years of YNCA’s existence, they’re excited to see what the future will bring. The group has plenty of plans in the making, but most of all, both are just excited to see the growing number of people involved directly and indirectly with YNCA’s work, as the group becomes more and more prominent in the community. Both see their work as youth as both invigorating and absolutely essential.

“The environment in general is just really important and youth… are especially important,” Saglik said. “We are the future.”

Ann Arbor Youth Combat Climate Change © 2025 by Youth Environmental Press Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/