A teen from White Rock is looking to educate youth across the province on the dire impacts of climate change by creating curriculum for B.C. schools.
"Climate literacy is a super important subject, but climate change isn’t formally introduced in our B.C. curriculum until Grade 7, and I found that extremely problematic because it’s such an important issue that affects everyone," said Lily YangLiu, a 16-year-old high school student who attended elementary and much of high school on the Peninsula but has now moved to the North Shore.
Lily, who has also served as a United Nations youth delegate, is originally from Beijing where she had a different understanding of environmental issues, given the level of air pollution she was surrounded by.
"I got asthma because of it, really bad chronic asthma, and I was really really lucky to have health care, but a lot of people aren’t who are so negatively impacted by climate change, pollution and (that realization) felt really, really horrible," she explained in an interview with Peace Arch News after being back home from attending the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
While attending elementary school in South Surrey's Morgan Elementary, Lily said she was disappointed with how the environment was not included much in what she was learning in the classroom. She spoke to her teachers and then began getting involved in learning more about it outside of class time.
"I found that the lack of education, especially in schools around it in public education, I found no dialogue whatsoever around climate, around oceans, and we lived in White Rock and we had this great resource to allow kids to fall in love with nature and visit the beach, but we weren’t doing that," Lily said.
Now, the 16-year-old is using her passion for introducing climate literacy to students in B.C. and in China to spread knowledge to both populations.
Lily is developing curriculum with local teachers in elementary schools and retired professors to integrate the topic of climate at a Grade 3 or 4 level, while also posting educational posts on WeChat, a Chinese social media app.
"I post there because China has no climate education, which I learned from my family and friends there," she shared.
"We get so much of our news on social media, so I thought it would be nice to have that message to young people, to learn a little bit about the climate every single day."
As a timeline, Lily is looking to have the curriculum completed and workshopped after testing it out in a few classrooms in spring 2025.
While Lily is enjoying both the local and international work she is doing on climate awareness, she is not planning on stopping any time soon. The 16-year-old sees herself doing this work "for the rest of my life" and has plans to major in environmental science or environmental policy in post-secondary.
"It empowers me, and it mobilized me to start acting towards climate change. Learning about it, I became vegetarian, I stopped eating meat because I realized just how dire the situation was and how we can personally help the environment," she said.
"I want to teach kids not only the problems we’re facing, but have hope because we have so much power regarding the environment."
