Teen leaders were celebrated at Oregon State University (OSU) during the Oregon Community Youth Development Summit. Many community-minded youth from around the state came together to share their successes, and to learn from others during a series of presentations, speeches and discussions.

For a group of Forest Grove High School students, participating in an environmentally minded group helped strengthen their science skills and their leadership skills, and raised their awareness about the importance of community involvement.

Equipo Verde (Green Team) is a 4-H Tech Wizards group of Latino students that have been working during the past school year on a restoration project along the banks of the Tualatin River in nearby Cornelius. The project was student-driven, and included gathering donations and garnering community partners to implement a tree-planting project.

Club member Tony Barragan said his participation in the project helped him learn about making a difference. “I learned we could help our local community,” he said. “Helping feels a lot better than doing nothing at all.”

By getting help from METRO and SOLV as well as receiving support from Cornelius and Forest Grove residents, the students were able to get two dozen volunteers to help them plant 400 trees along the river, reducing erosion and replacing non-native invasive species with native plants.

Three of the Equipo Verde members gave a presentation on their project to an audience of more than 150 in the CH2M Hill Alumni Center. The trio said when they first joined Equipo Verde, none of them would have envisioned speaking in front of such a large group.

Maria Bahena overcame the difficulties of being a non-native speaker to give her part of the presentation. “The most important thing is that it is necessary for people to be involved in things,” she said, “because we as a community need a lot of help. There are a lot of things to do.”

Daisy Ortiz even got the audience involved in an impromptu group exercise. She held up one fragile stick of wood, and said that it represented a stream. Then she asked the audience for three things that make a stream healthy and successful.

As people shouted out suggestions, such as native plants and a plenitude of tree roots, she added more sticks to the single stream stick, and then showed the audience how the cluster of sticks became unbreakable. “All of this combined makes streams healthy and strong,” she said.