this film was created with the goal of inspiring nuance in whatever stance you take on animals in the captivity of zoos & aquariums.

to watch the full short film, please click here.

that’s what we focus on at planet forward — the ideas, inventions, and outrageously ambitious innovations needed to address our planetary challenges. we’re based at a university and we work with a 2022年世界杯亚洲预选赛结果 of schools — students and faculty alike — to research and tell stories that inform, inspire, and drive action.

today, i have the pleasure of announcing an important journey of collaboration: the planet forward-comcast nbcuniversal sustainable storytelling fellowship. with support from our friends at comcast nbcuniversal, we have selected three talented student storytellers who will report from the frontlines of sustainability. along with my colleagues, i will mentor and guide them. their mini-documentaries will be screened to an audience of academics, professionals, and in the fields of science and communication at the 2022 planet forward summit.

our storytelling fellows bring an exciting commitment, curiosity, and passion for storytelling to this remarkable opportunity. their stories will reflect their diversity and their depth and will focus on communities where sustainability is an urgent challenge. we are so grateful for comcast for making this journey of discovery possible.

i’m delighted to share with you the planet forward-comcast nbcuniversal sustainable storytelling fellows for the 2021-22 academic year:

• mckenzie allen-charmley, who is a rising senior majoring in broadcast journalism at arizona state university’s walter cronkite school of journalism and mass communication and minoring in business. she is an alaska native and black journalist from anchorage, alaska pursuing a career in broadcast journalism to inspire young native girls and to help create the foundation of a journalistic evolution that values representation, authenticity and accuracy above all else. her love of the environment began as a child, growing up living a subsistence lifestyle with her family members from her tribal village of eklutna. 

• jennifer cuyuch, who is a rising senior majoring in political communication at george washington university’s school of media and public affairs and minoring in photography and spanish. her passion for environmental studies started when she joined take back the tap, an organization aiming to raise awareness about water privatization, during her freshman year. she is also passionate about multimedia and latin american migration studies, as her parents migrated from peru and guatemala, and she aims to bring attention to the interconnections between climate change, migration and displacement through her work. 

• jelina liu, who is also a political communication student at george washington university’s school of media and public affairs. liu is a chinese-american filmmaker from the bay area. she has experience in both fictional and nonfiction storytelling, but now specializes in documentary filmmaking. she is also passionate about socioeconomic and environmental justice and has experience in grassroots organizing. this passion informs her work, as she aims to tell stories that will inspire people to take action. 

i look forward to working with the fellows as their stories unfold, and to sharing these stories with you, our community, in april.

specifically, edralin wanted to focus on food insecurity within the context of covid-19. her piece profiled the green bronx machine, a nonprofit organization that seeks to build healthy, equitable, and resilient communities through inspired education, local food systems, and workforce development.

edralin had pitched the topic for her short documentary because she had crossed paths with the founder of the green bronx machine at a conference in milan, italy, years ago and decided to reach out to see how they were handling the covid-19 pandemic in their classrooms.

the process of completing this film took about two months. we had to reshoot a lot because of minor details we would notice after we’d reviewed our footage, so this process required us to pay close attention to detail — and utilize a lot of patience! however, looking back now, we’re glad we took our time with it.

there’s a lot more to creating a documentary than just picking up a camera; creating a documentary is an art form that has a long process, but the final product is worth the effort. 

we are facing climate change in the united states in the form of more intense and frequent storm events, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires. right now we have adapted, but that does not mean that climate change is under control. many countries around the world are dealing with serious threats right now; they are bearing the brunt of our behavior, and the burden that they are carrying now will only get heavier.

we sat down with sabrina mccormick, who worked as a producer and associate producer on the showtime original series years of living dangerously, in which hollywood celebrities span the globe to experience climate change.  sabrina has committed herself to learning about the intricacies of the extreme impacts of climate-related phenomena like heat waves, emergent vector-borne disease, and climate-related disasters. she has coupled this knowledge with her passions for filmmaking and storytelling, discussing with us the importance of communicating these complicated facets of climate change.

“seeing is believing,” she said, reflecting on her time spent in bangladesh for the filming of the series finale “moving a mountain” with michael c. hall. “if we can’t see what the future will look like either bad or good, we don’t know, we don’t believe it, we aren’t going to do anything.”

film is a critical tool that can be used to address the complex task of communicating the intricacies of climate change and encouraging immediate action. “this is a task that we have as media makers and as newsmakers, to show audiences what their world can be like and then through that process, get them to actually do something.”

filmmakers like sabrina have taken on this important task and are telling climate change stories, inviting audiences to consider the abstract idea of climate change in a personal way. what’s your climate change story? what have you experienced and seen? show audiences, use media tools, and empower others to learn more about how climate change could affect their lives and the lives of many vulnerable people like those in bangladesh and around the world.