Climate Activism Picks Up Steam at GOA

By Shayne Cytrynbaum ‘25
Golda Och Academy’s newly reorganized Climate Activism Club is starting something big this year. The Climate Activism Club is beginning a series of meetings and negotiations with the school’s Board of Directors, working to convince the school to divest from fossil fuels. This development is months in the making, and is also deeply tied to the club’s role as a chapter of the Jewish Youth Climate Movement.

“Our school needs to do something more to acknowledge the climate crisis. If we don’t, we’re just going to fall behind.” said Junior Daniel Shapiro
Divestment from fossil fuels has become a major rallying cry for climate justice groups over the past few years, as institutions are asked to dismantle themselves from the systems that fund climate chaos across the world. 
Corporations and organizations are pushed towards pulling out of all their investments in fossil fuel companies, as well as to divest, to the best of their ability, from financial funds that prominently feature fossil fuel companies among their portfolios. 
Advocates of fossil fuel divestment say that we lack the time to wait for government to step in or for the market to phase out fossil fuels on its own, so it is up to institutions to force climate action by using their monetary power and influence to weaken the fossil fuel industry.
GOA’s Climate Activism Club has been at it for a while now, pushing for GOA to divest its $54.8 million endowment from fossil fuels, and to reinvest the funds towards climate solutions such as renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. Much of this work is rooted in the Climate Activism Club’s association with the Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM), which is a national Gen-Z led climate activism organization for Jewish teens. 
The Climate Activism Club became a JYCM “kvutzah,” or chapter, in October 2021. A major theme that JYCM had been working towards was divesting Jewish institutions from fossil fuels, and as the Climate Activism Club worked to become a JYCM Kvutzah, the club realized that this could be an excellent project for the club to take on that could make a real difference,” Shapiro said.
Since then, the club’s efforts have gone remarkably quickly. In October, the Climate Activism Club met with GOA’s new Head of School, Rabbi Daniel Nevins, who is a self-described environmentalist, to discuss their goals and projects. In November, the club attended a JYCM welcome call where they got to explain their goals for Golda Och to members of the JYCM Leadership Board. 
In December, the club began correspondence with members of Golda Och’s Board of Directors, although they have not had a Zoom meeting yet. The Climate Activism Club remains quite hopeful that they will be able to convince the school to divest at least part of the school’s massive endowment from fossil fuel corporations, and already many students, parents, teachers and faculty-members have expressed sympathy with the club’s plans.
“There are a lot of ways students can get involved in environmental causes, but we felt that the administration could help us to improve the impact our school makes as a whole,” explains 9th grader and Climate Activism Club member Katriela Nelkin. 
“Real change starts when people go to the ones in charge and tell them what needs to be done,” Katriela said.
The Climate Activism Club and the Board are expecting to meet sometime in January, and then hold at least a second meeting in the weeks after. The Climate Activism Club is also building up a wider coalition of allied clubs to push for fossil fuel divestment.  GOA student clubs are invited to consider participating in the campaign and encouraged to contact Dr. Klein for details.