Climate change is one of the most important crises of this generation, and OVS students are taking action.
A handful of OVS students are involved in two separate off-campus initiatives aimed at making their communities greener and more sustainable.
The Green Valley Project has been connected with OVS students for years, and this year senior CatieJo Larkin, junior Logan Wallace and sophomore Ben Manning are a part of the group, along with sophomore Elizabeth Ramsay, who serves as an intern for the council.
In addition, OVS junior Eugene Fisher is working this year with the Ojai Valley Green Coalition, an adult volunteer group dedicated to keeping the Ojai Valley clean and beautiful as well as leading and participating in climate activism opportunities.
On Thursday, April 21, seven OVS students accompanied Eugene to the local farmer’s market to run a bike valet and upcycling art booth.
These students, in collaboration with the Ojai Valley Green Coalition, set up a bike valet for locals coming to the farmer’s market in an attempt to encourage attendees to ride their bikes to the Thursday evening event.
Eugene serves as the student council’s community service representative, and the coalition reached out to him to find volunteers for the event.
Many OVS students feel very strongly about climate change and look for activism opportunities whenever possible, and several jumped at the opportunity to help stage the bike valet. 
“The bike valet and upcycling booth was a little tricky at first,” Eugene said. “But once we really got things going we actually had people staying later than they signed up for, and got a lot more done than we initially thought we would.”
Unlike the Green Coalition, the Green Valley Project is almost entirely student run.
CatieJo Larkin has been involved with the group for two years now. She has participated in a range of different projects and has helped bring new students into the group.
Logan Wallace and Ben Manning joined the group this year, attending weekly meetings to come up
with ways to make Ojai a better place.
“We do a lot of different projects throughout the Valley,” Logan said. “Things like tree planting all around Ojai, we have trash pickups and all sorts of stuff.”
Every year the group decides on a new goal and focuses its projects around that.
“This year we’re focused on bringing back pollinators,” Ben said. “We have a stand at the farmer’s market where we sell pollinator starter kits.”
The pollinator project was many months in the making and the committee spent many hours planting native species around Ojai.
“Pollinators are things like bees, butterflies and moths, along with other insects,” Ben explained. “So to bring them back we’ve been planting things like Buckwheat and milkweed all around town, so that they can return in larger numbers.”
Sustainability is an integral part of the OVS ideals and has been instilled in students since they started at the school. Now, they are taking what they have learned at OVS and driving environmental conservation projects in the community.
“This year was a little hard because it was a transition year from Covid,” Eugene remarked. “But I think next year with things a little more ‘normal’ we can bring a lot more volunteer opportunities to OVS students, and do a lot more for the valley we call home.”