Faith Edem, MPA’19, became an environmental activist early in life and continues to make a name for herself. Whether being named one of Canada’s top 30 under 30 sustainability leaders of 2021 or contributing to a book highlighting the views of BIPOC youth on climate change, she continues to work to ensure diverse voices are heard in the environmental movement. That concern for her community traces its roots to her first job as a teaching assistant in a high school civics class. Today, she uses that experience to help shape international trade policy at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
My school board was providing young people the opportunity to be teaching assistants during summer school. I think I was 16 at the time. It was a fun and interesting experience for me, but it struck me how something as accessible as education still struggled to provide students with an equal footing in terms of their development. Half the students took the summer course to earn credits to graduate earlier; the other half were students who had fallen behind and didn’t get the credit during the regular school year.
Overall, that second group struggled with the civics material: whether it was with learning, logical reasoning, or reading comprehension, it was challenging. Providing those students with customized one-on-one support helped me see the big picture and the need to provide robust solutions that help folks be the best that they can. I also learned from the early credit students that young people can be ambitious and forward-thinking, but if gaps are not addressed, some students can go unnoticed and, unfortunately, falter without receiving the one-on-one attention they deserve. From a public policy point of view, it’s important to understand that we can develop really great solutions, but we also need to consider who could fall into these gaps and what we could do to support those most vulnerable.
The other half of the problem was that those students were not connecting with the learning material because they simply didn’t understand the technical language. This resonated with me, and continues to, especially now working in public policy, where I value my role in bridging the gap on complex topics such as energy policy, climate finance, and now trade. I know this can be difficult, especially for young people interested in speaking or advocating on an issue, since some material can be very technical and you feel like you need to be an expert to be able to raise issues. So, I think the most important aspect of conveying something as important as civics or environmental impacts is to make sure the information is accessible: it needs to be useful to the people who are getting it, so they can understand it and act on it.
What I try to do is encourage more equitable and accessible discussions, so folks have a better understanding of what “environment” can encompass. It’s not just pollution; it could also be plastics, climate justice, energy, or sustainability. There’s so much that goes into protecting our environment and, for me, that civics class serves as a reminder that great solutions can still have gaps and not to take that process for granted.
