Youth News | E3C | KWU | CCAG | Renew Boston & CBE
Building Teen Leadership Skills Around Ecology and Community
NOAH’s Environmental Chelsea Creek Crew (E3C) employs seven East Boston teens to work with the Chelsea Creek Action Group (CCAG). The youth learn how to be local leaders as they participate in the clean up and redevelopment of polluted sites and the development of programs related to ecological, environmental, recreational, and health issues associated with the Chelsea Creek (actually a river, and considered to be the second-most polluted body of water in Massachusetts).
NOAH's overall goals for working with the the Environmental Chelsea Creek Crew are to:
- Provide youth with an opportunity to learn of and become involved with ecological, environmental, and health issues associated with the Chelsea Creek Action Group (CCAG)
- Encourage and empower youth to take leadership roles in their communities while helping them to improve their academic, public-speaking, employment, and other associated skills
- Engage youth positively within their community
- Instill in the community a sense of youth as an asset
E3C is a way for NOAH to provide environmental, economic, civic, and public-health education to East Boston’s youth while also providing them with year-round employment.
Hands On Experience
Through hands-on experience as well as extensive training in environmental justice and community organizing, the youth come to realize that they can, in fact, make a difference in their community. They determine which relevant projects they think are important for the improvement of their urban environment and work towards achieving their goals, often in cooperation with the Chelsea Creek Action Group (CCAG).
Experimental Learning and Working
The youth program is geared towards experiential learning and working. The crew has worked on field studies with the Urban Ecology Institute (UEI) once/week – this included working with biologists and ecologists to monitor the water quality, catalogue the plant biodiversity, and identify the wildlife present at the Condor Street Urban Wild. They also work with CCAG to organize recreational and educational programs at the 
Urban Wild and elsewhere such as nature walks, catch and release fishing, kite flying, Halloween parade, etc. The youth manage a Community Garden. Environmental clean-ups are another vital component of E3C’s work. Empowering this diverse group of young people of East Boston is a way NOAH ensures the long-term success of our community-based efforts.
