Today’s speaker was Alanya Friedman, a recognized youth leader and currently a student at Virginia Tech studying environmental sciences. Locally, she served as president of the Environmental Club at Columbia High School and led a tree distribution initiative that delivered bare-root native trees to hundreds of local homeowners.
Alanya told us of her American, Turkish background and some of the environmental issues she has encountered when visiting family in Turkey such as deforestation and how global warming is impacting central Asia. She also discussed her curriculum at VT and gave us some insights into life on today’s college campuses (a distant memory for some of the older Rotarians). Other topics discussed were different advocacy efforts to combat global warming and outreach programs such as eco-tourism and environmental summer camps.
There was a lively Q&A session. Alanya is an impressive advocate for greater environmental awareness and we greatly appreciate her visiting Rotary and sharing her thoughts with us.
L/R: Jackie Kondel, Francie Cho, Alanya, Pete Bolton & Susan Haig