The Youth Visionary Collective
In 2020 Roots & Routes IC saw a miraculous turn of events: the inception of R&R’s youth community. Right as the global pandemic stay-at-home order was issued, a handful of Juli Hazlewood’s (our Co-founder and Executive Director) past students contacted her to seize the opportunity to seek online mentorship, engagement, and collaboration between other youth and community leaders around the world. Since then, each season has welcomed increasingly more R&R interns. In autumn it became clear that the youth constitute a new Roots & Routes community: The Youth Visionary Collective (YVC). The YVC has become the heart of Roots & Routes. The YVC provides an experience based in global interaction that contributes to learning responsibility in four principal ways:
Teaching youth how to build and sustain an intercultural and global community.
Acquiring knowledge and skills for collectively learning how to build an organization.
Collaborating on R&R’s community-led and environmentally focused projects.
Working with a non-profit leader in a mentorship relationship on real-world issues.
The interns involved in the YVC have been based throughout the United States, Canada Finland, Sweden, Norway, England, Austria, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Singapore, Japan, Pakistan, Chile, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. They work in six teams to bring educational and cultural benefits to the youth today and in the future.
The YVC works during the four seasons of the year. The upcoming seasonal dates are:
Spring 2023: April 9th to June 18th
Summer 2023: July 9th to September 17th
Fall 2023: October 8th to December 17th
Check out our amazing interns and teams on this page!
THE INTERNS
BISHA RIOS
New York City, NY, USA
Steering Committee & YVC Board Representative
Grace sellers
Indiana, USA
Pluriversity Team
ARYAN TREHAN
Mumbai, India
Steering Committee & Podcast Team
Olivia Lopes DaSilva
White Plains, NY, USA
Blogs & Newsletter Team
Sai Waters
Waltham, MA, USA
Pluriversity Team
Arabella Davis
Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Blogs & Newsletter Team
Shawnesty Brown
Central Valley, CA, USA
Grants Team
Anuki Dulya Wanigasinghe
Oita, Japan
Pluriversity Team
Griffin Harvey
New York, NY, USA
Steering Team
Juliana Osorio
Medellín, Colombia
Rights of Nature Team
Aila Musić
Salisbury, NC, USA
Blogs & Newsletter Team
Liz Ortmann
Washington D.C., USA
Blogs & Newsletter Team
Elizabeth Fernandez
Gainsville, FL, USA
Steering Committee & Blogs & Newsletter Team
Trenicia Evans
Oxfort, Florida, USA
Grants Team
Kividi Koralage
Panadura, Sri Lanka
Podcast Team
Serena Yu
Indiana, USA
Pluriversity Team
Alimah Fagbenro
Long Island, NY, USA
Grants Team
Carla Alvarado
Long Beach, CA, USA
Podcast team
Karen erazo trejo
San Lorenzo, Ecuador
Rights of Nature Team
Christian nazareno porozo
San Lorenzo, Ecuador
Rights of Nature Team
THE TEAMS
Steering Committee
Interns in the Steering Committee have varying lengths of experience with Roots & Routes IC. They work on organizing meetings and research ways to improve the YVC, help other interns, facilitate intercultural collaborations rooted in the four branches above, and manage the organizational capacity of the YVC. They also recruit new interns for the YCV who bolster the intersectionality of our organization. Lastly, the Steering Committee reaches out to speakers who work as Indigenous advisories and leaders and help coordinate and lead interviews where we can learn more about their work.
Podcast Team
Interns work on creating, organizing and launching the Roots & Routes Podcast, focused around the bi-weekly guest speakers of each season helping to re-vindicating and re-learning Indigenous ways of knowing. Every other week the YVC has guest speakers come on board to speak about their various experiences and knowledges. They have ranged from disability advocates to Indigenous leaders from across the world. These talks are then turned into an amazing podcast episode. Stay tuned for our release!
Pluriversity Team
Roots & Routes is evolving into an online and in-person experiential education-inaction platform called a pluriversity. Pluriversities celebrate many ways of knowing and important ancestral cultural sciences that do not need reinterpretation into Western frameworks to be valid; they already are! The “pluri” emphasizes many ways of knowing. Interns are in charge of researching alternative models of education to craft a new Pluriversity rooted in the four branches above. Currently, work is focusing on crafting a five-year strategic plan, as well as our pilot course for the new educational platform. Stay tuned!
Social Media Team
Interns are working on improving the organization’s social media platforms and starting a podcast focused on re-storying our relationships across borders and generations. Every other week the YVC has guest speakers come on board to speak about their various experiences and knowledges. They have ranged from disability advocates to Indigenous leaders from across the world. These talks turn into social media content in the form of Quote of the day posts, reels and video clips. The Social Media Team are responsible for the beautiful and informative posts you see on our instagram, as well as the video clips found in some of our blogs. See our instagram for the amazing posts our interns have made!
Blog & Newsletter Team
Interns are creating, organizing and sending out newsletters and blog posts for the website, helping to re-story intercultural collaborations, and give updates on the goings-on of the organization. Every other Sunday guest speakers come and speak with the YVC interns. They have ranged from disability advocates to Indigenous leaders from across the world. After these conversations the blog team writes a blog sharing the inspiring an eye-opening conversations with the world. See previous blogs on our blog page.
Rights of Nature Team
The Rights of Nature Team is our only Spanish speaking team, mostly made up of the youth in the communities we work in. They are working towards protecting the Rights of Nature in their communities and have recently started posting on our Spanish instagram account, posting updates on what’s going on in the communities. Check out their amazing work here.
AN HONORARY MENTION TO ALL OUR PREVIOUS INTERNS WHO HAVE HELPED ROOTS & ROUTES IC GROW INTO WHAT WE ARE TODAY
Thank you!
Annaliese Terrazas | Antumalen (Kattya Urrutia) | Bella Bond | Bianca Martinez | Brian Bahn | Cameron Clark
Coral Richardson | Cynthia Leung | Damon LIM Wei | Divya Lingala | Efrain Erazo | Eliza Stowe | Gaby Alpizar
Galen Tsongas | Hanna Garcia | Harry Burton | Jennilyn Stenske | Jillian Peterson | Jonathan Chen | Jyssica Thomas
Karelin Torres | Karen Erazo | Karina Atkins | Kate Velestegui | Katherine Weatherholtz | Keyra Espinosa
Kimberly Hadeka | Leni Lindemann | Luis Ballesteros | Madison Nesbit | Marisa Weinstock | Megan Stewart | Miriam Abel
Nicolette Nodine | Reese Komesu | Ricardo Hurtado | Rose Mbii | Rose Zhou | Sanam Noorani | Sanna Honkaniemi
Sara Sebahar | Shadé Pearce | Stalin Valencia | Sydney Repp | Tiffany Chen | Will Shain | Zeynep Bastiyali
Joshua Carmenatte | Ippei Kato | Eleonora Moen | Emilee McBryde | Veronika Juylova | Sneaha Santra | Edwin Magaña-
Lopez | Laura Wain | Magdalene Idiang | Viona Kageha | Chinomnso Onwubiko | Neena Kalazani | Sophie Craig |
Unna-Maija Matinlauri | Pearly Wong | Efrain Erazo | Karen Erazo | Miriam Valencia | Stalin Valencia| Carolina Marca
Zachary Bolash | Takt Nagano | Savannah Avery | Anna-Lena Ball | Annelise Rice | Arianna Shafai | Claudia Cochrane
Heather Zuo | Jianna Martinez | Luna Pamadiken | Maggie McNeal | Maxwell Breslin | Nerea Rodriguez Cuadrado
Sarah Hollingsworth | Meredith Fucci | Georgia Cole | Ana Alvarez | Elizabeth Wright | Hannah Randall | Lydia Miller
Lily Kalinke | Lauren Moreno | Nadia Dilshath | Mwisa Msiska | Maria Veloso | Kiva Victoria | Regina Alachi | Keyra Espinosa |
Christian Nazareno | Grace Holling | Serjevah Davis | Charlotte Estey | Kat Negrete | Anni Honkaniemi | Dounia Lajlufi |
Emili Ma | Maham Nadeem | Olivia Frykman | Camila Biselli | Amy Underhill | Phoebe Hoag | Oluwafemi Ogunrinde | Nastazia
Kielar | Layton Birchell