YOUNG HEROES

With Phebe Meyers & Claire Vlases

Season 1, Episode 12

How did one eight-year-old girl protect endangered rainforest in Costa Rica and all the songbirds living there? How did a bold middle schooler rally an entire community in Montana to install solar panels?

Today we welcome on to the show two more outstanding young heroes.

Phebe Meyers founded a group called Change the World Kids that has helped tropical songbirds throughout Central America.

Claire Vlases did everything possible to gain support for installing solar panels in her Montana town… including dressing up as a solar panel for Halloween.

T. A., Phebe, and Claire discuss the importance of community and the power of thinking like a kid.

These young heroes share what gives them hope, who are their mentors, and how they overcame critics of their young age and ambitious goals.

How can one kid make a lasting difference?

Tune in and hear these kids’ answers.

Change the World Kids is still hard at work – learn more!

Claire’s story (and that Halloween costume…) was also featured on our sister site, Inspiring Young Heroes.

Check out the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes.

Magic & Mountains is hosted by T. A. Barron, beloved author of more than 30 books. Carolyn Hunter is co-host.

Magic & Mountains Theme Song by Julian Peterson.

YOUNG HEROES

With Phebe Meyers & Claire Vlases

Season 1, Episode 12

How did one eight-year-old girl protect endangered rainforest in Costa Rica and all the songbirds living there? How did a bold middle schooler rally an entire community in Montana to install solar panels?

Today we welcome on to the show two more outstanding young heroes.

Phebe Meyers founded a group called Change the World Kids that has helped tropical songbirds throughout Central America.

Claire Vlases did everything possible to gain support for installing solar panels in her Montana town… including dressing up as a solar panel for Halloween.

T. A., Phebe, and Claire discuss the importance of community and the power of thinking like a kid.

These young heroes share what gives them hope, who are their mentors, and how they overcame critics of their young age and ambitious goals.

How can one kid make a lasting difference?

Tune in and hear these kids’ answers.

Change the World Kids is still hard at work – learn more!

Claire’s story (and that Halloween costume…) was also featured on our sister site, Inspiring Young Heroes.

Check out the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes.

Magic & Mountains is hosted by T. A. Barron, beloved author of more than 30 books. Carolyn Hunter is co-host.

Magic & Mountains Theme Song by Julian Peterson.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

MEET OUR GUESTS

Phebe Meyers

As a teen, Phebe founded a youth group called Change the World Kids. The group raised over $100,000 to protect crucial rainforest habitat in Costa Rica, land that created a migration corridor for wildlife, including glorious tropical songbirds. Currently, Phebe runs all the community programs at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies in Aspen, Colorado. Her great positive energy continues to make a huge impact.

Claire Vlases

Claire Vlases, from Bozeman, Montana, was only in middle school when she decided that solar panels made great sense for her town as well as the planet. So she created a student group called Solar Makes Sense which galvanized the whole community, sparking a movement to embrace renewable energy and commit to more green building. To make sure her dreams would come true, Claire lobbied local businesses, spoke to the utility company, and even trick-or-treated as a solar panel that year, asking for donations to the cause instead of candy. Thanks to her efforts, many buildings in town installed solar panels.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Note: Magic & Mountains: The T. A. Barron Podcast is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that’s not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Young Heroes: Phebe Meyers & Claire Vlases
T. A. Barron
Welcome, everyone. This is “Magic & Mountains.”

Carolyn Hunter
“The T. A. Barron Podcast.”

T. A. Barron
Today, let’s welcome two wonderful, special guests. Phebe Meyers is one of the world’s most wonderful people! How else can I say it? She is creative, caring, wise, and full of a generosity of spirit that is awesome. As a teen, Phebe founded a youth group called Change the World Kids. Don’t you just love that name? The group raised over $100,000 to protect crucial rainforest habitat in Costa Rica. Land that linked the existing wildlands to create a migration quarter for wildlife, including glorious tropical songbirds. Currently, Phebe runs all the community programs at the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies in Aspen, Colorado. So as you can tell, her, great positive energy continues to make a huge impact.

Claire Vlases, from Bozeman, Montana, simply radiates enthusiasm. And that enthusiasm is electrifying, literally. While in middle school in Bozeman, Claire created and led Solar Makes Sense, an initiative that she founded. First, she organized a bunch of kids who raised all the money needed to install solar panels on her middle school. No small task. But then she didn’t stop. She galvanized the whole community, sparking a movement to embrace renewable energy and commit to more green building. Get this. To make sure that her dreams were going to come true, Claire even trick-or-treated as a solar panel that year, asking for donations to the cause instead of candy. She also talked the local energy company into helping to fund more solar panels. So put it this way, solar is a great energy source, but Claire is an even more powerful energy source.

So, my first question for you two, is to tell us about the origins of your service project when you were at that young and formative age when the idea first came to you. Let’s start with you, Phebe.

Phebe Meyers
Thank you, Tom, so much for having us on your podcast and excited to share a little bit of our stories with this audience. I co-founded Change the World Kids with my twin sister Nika. And we didn’t document exactly how we started this organization because it was in response to hearing about some horrible news across the seas, whether it was a war or an earthquake. But we wanted to do something to help, and we knew that traveling over to that spot was unrealistic at the time, we were eight. But we got a group of friends together and decided to do what we could do as eight-year-olds and help in our community. Our first project was helping an elderly family, both compromised by illness, garden and stack their wood, and it just grew from there. We did all sorts of projects that eight-year-olds could do. This started as a project a month, then it moved into a project every few weeks. Now the organization is doing up to six projects or more a week, and many projects both locally and globally.

T. A. Barron
Did anybody ever try to tell you, “Come on, kids can’t make a difference. Kids aren’t going to change the world.”

Phebe Meyers
Yes. They looked at us and said, “This is cute. This will be a phase.” And we were like, “No, we’re not stopping!” And the energy from our friends and from community members really just got us going too and it’s still in existence today. It’s a teen run nonprofit tackling local and global humanitarian issues, just trying to make a positive difference in the world.

T. A. Barron
Terrific. Claire, tell us about your journey. How did you come up with the idea to install solar panels on your school?

Claire Vlases
So when I was around 13, I don’t know. I guess the reason why I came up with it is growing up in Montana, I have a huge appreciation for nature and the land. I’ve learned through my family and through, I guess, the community in Bozeman in Montana that the land is something worth protecting. And so one day when I was going to school in 7th grade, I looked up at the flat roof of my middle school and thought there was a lot of sun that could be used to make energy.

T. A. Barron
Did that just idea just occur to you? It just popped into your mind?

Claire Vlases
Well, I had recently been learning about different renewable energies in class. And then I figured, if I’m learning about it, why is it not something I see every day? And then I decided that I could take that project on and make it something kids do see every day.

T. A. Barron
Fabulous. Did you have any mentors or people who encouraged you on that journey?

Claire Vlases
My project, the Solar Makes Sense project, was a huge community effort. We raised over $125,000. So, it took a lot of people to get that involved.

T. A. Barron
Now, most of that came from your Halloween costume, right?

Claire Vlases
Oh, yeah, definitely. [Laughter] But I’d say my biggest mentor was my principal at the time, Principal Grissom. He just supported me from day one. I took my idea to get solar panels to him and he thought it was a great idea and drove me later that day to present to architects and contractors and tell them about the idea of getting solar panels on the middle school because the school is going through a remodel in the coming years. Which that was not well received, my idea. I didn’t have much of a foundation at all. And I heard over and over that it was just something that was not feasible. Estimates were hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the school didn’t have that kind of money for renewable energy at the time. And so I figured, well, what if I got the money? And so I did.

T. A. Barron
You didn’t miss a beat. Many kids would have stopped right there.

Claire Vlases
Yeah, it was hard right after that first meeting, yeah, I went home, cried a little bit, and then I realized I didn’t have much of a concept of how much money, $120,000 was at all. I didn’t really know anything about money at all, so I figured that was something I could get within the week. It wasn’t. [Laughter] So months later, through a lot of fundraising, community organizing, and meeting with incredible, generous people all around my community, it was able to happen.

T. A. Barron
You somehow made it a community event, didn’t you?

Claire Vlases
It was a community event from the beginning just because solar panels, I guess it’s a public good. So it’s shared by everyone. And the love for the environment and respect for land and nature is also shared by everyone. So it just had to be something the whole community needed to invest in, even to make it happen.

T. A. Barron
But you, like Phebe, won the support of people who are focused on other things. How did you do that? How did you get people to pay attention, to realize, this is important. This should be at the top of your priority list.

Claire Vlases
The first thing I did was start by just showing up. So I went to school board meetings and I talked about it, and I went to other meetings with architects and contractors, and I talked about it. I got a feasibility study, I talked about it, and I let everyone know just what was going on and how we could make it happen. For example, I presented to the school board one time after a meeting for the public comment section. And it was right after some architects and contractors talked about their plans for the school, and they said they wanted it to be a 21st century building. And I stood up and I said, “What’s a 21st century building without solar panels?”

T. A. Barron
Perfect.

Claire Vlases
And that got some media attention. So then I started doing interviews. I talked to people, I got other students involved and going around canvassing door to door, business to business, asking for funds. From there, it became something everyone could get involved in.

T. A. Barron
Fabulous. Even if you didn’t have a solar panel costume on, you could be part of it.

Now, Phebe, you had to convince people to listen to you as a young eight-year-old and let you persuade them that you could actually make a difference. How did you do that?

Phebe Meyers
Believing in yourself, and also knowing that trying your hardest is the best you can do.

T. A. Barron
Beautiful. So tell us, what was your biggest project?

Phebe Meyers
Our big project that I specifically won the Barron Prize for was a project that came out from observing fewer songbirds at our bird feeders and finding the answer in the deforested landscapes of Costa Rica. Our family went down there when I was twelve, and we stayed at a biological center in Monteverde and learned from biologists that were staying there that there was this project that they were starting to try to purchase land and connect a migratory corridor that was crucial habitat for indigenous birds and the neotropical songbirds. And we learned that many of our neotropical songbirds in Vermont wintered in these very forests that were no longer on the slopes of the mountains in Costa Rica. And we were like, “We can help!” We started actively getting donations and trying to raise money to protect this corridor in Costa Rica that benefited our birds as well. And it was just such an amazing experience. In 2004, we as a group went down there for the first time and just to have our hands in the soil and to really be doing the reforestation, to be able to be on the lands that we’ve helped purchase. And over the years, thousands of acres and hundreds of thousands of dollars has been raised to protect this migratory quarter. And the group is — actually the Change The World Kids are heading on their 18th year, going down to Costa Rica in a few weeks to continue that work and to see the trees that we planted in 2004 and to see the trees now being 30, 40, 50 feet tall.

T. A. Barron
I’m curious, both of you, how has this journey, how has this experience, the challenges, the obstacles, as well as the successes and surprises, how has it changed you? What difference has it made in your lives? Phebe?

Phebe Meyers
The power of acting upon a dream and sharing that and connecting with people and place are lessons that I learned through this work and continue very much with my work that I do today.

T. A. Barron
How about you, Claire?

Claire Vlases
Well, earlier you asked Phebe how she got people to listen to her when she was – even when she was young. And I think that’s what I really learned through my project. Because I didn’t know anything about the limitations of the funding or what I could or couldn’t do because I had no understanding of a type of ceiling, I thought I could do anything. And because of that, I was motivated to do anything, to do everything. And so even though it was hard to get people to listen or to understand that I had a big dream or a passion, I found that some people would listen to me more because I was a kid, just because I was voicing a group that was usually unheard. There’s not a lot of kids that come to school board meetings, for example. And so I learned that if I think like a kid, if I think like there’s nothing I can’t do, then I’m able to do just about anything I set my mind to. If I think about something without worrying of the limitations of that thing, I’m able to do much more. And yeah, I guess I’ve learned you can do anything if you think you can. And if you’re not worried about what other people think or say.

T. A. Barron
Marvelous, powerful. Claire, when you see the scale of problems in our world, what renews your hope? What gives you, again that jolt of possibility and worthiness of trying?

Claire Vlases
That’s a hard question. Just because it’s easy to get caught up in everything. It’s a whirlwind every day, and it’s easy to feel helpless with all the things that are going on, and especially for kids who can’t yet vote or know much about civil participation, it’s really hard to feel like your voice is heard. But I think what is most inspiring to me to keep going with community projects and community service is learning about projects like Phebe or the other Gloria Barron Prize winners. But also learning and hearing about their communities that are willing to support them. And so even if you’re not out here with giant, big ideas of how to change the world, but you know someone else that is, I think that’s the biggest thing. Being able to support other people and help them on their journeys. Because, you know, it just takes one person to be a leader, but it takes everyone else to get behind that and support that. And I think we usually get caught up on who, like, the leader is or the spear header of each project, but really, it’s the base of support and the community that makes all the difference. And so I think anytime that you can get involved with something, even if it’s a small – you know – it doesn’t have to even be a financial donation – just anything you can do to help someone else. That’s what inspires me every day.

T. A. Barron
So true. Wonderful. Thank you. Phebe, what renews your hope?

Phebe Meyers
Relationships recharge my battery and the natural world. And I think that, like Claire was saying, action does not need to be starting a nonprofit or doing something seemingly huge. It really can be those small acts or those personal choices that you make and how you relate to each other in the natural world. To choose how you want to walk through this wild world.

T. A. Barron
Thank you both, Phebe and Claire, it’s been a delight and an inspiration to talk with you today.

Phebe Meyers
Thank you so much.

Claire Vlases
Thank you for having me.

T. A. Barron
Well, folks, that concludes our podcast season number one. We’ve explored the myth and magic of Merlin, the mysteries of the creative process, the power of seeing your life as a story, the wonders and challenges of nature, and the inspiration of young heroes. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have, and if so, stay tuned for more to come in the future. And meanwhile, may you have magical days.

Carolyn Hunter
We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of “Magic & Mountains: The T. A. Barron Podcast.” Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information and to find all of T. A.’s books, visit TABarron.com. Have a magical week.