The climate is changing around us. As our lands and oceans are becoming damaged and filled, young people are faced with the issue constantly. Some students have stepped up, opening a new club and space to make change.

Conservation and Marine Club is run by juniors Leela Weintraub, Echo Larsen and Maria Di Fabbrizio and meets every X-block. Together, they have worked to organize and participate in many fundraisers to have a positive impact on their community.

The primary focus of this group is creating change in any way they can; this often comes in the form of fundraising. The club often reaches out to outside organizations and spends their meetings moving forward on those projects.

“A lot of the time at the club is filled with brainstorming for our future fundraisers or activities. But if we don’t have planning to do that week, we will do a Kahoot or a study session on the topic,” Larsen said.

Club members are currently brainstorming for their fundraiser in connection with the Marine Science class to expand resources for its students. Larsen said through a movie night at the Leeway Building Theatre, the club will raise money to help the class get coral for their tank.

“I am really proud of helping lead a clean-up that we completed back in October. I did a lot of the work. [Although] we didn’t personally organize the whole clean up, I helped organize our connection and involvement of our club with the clean-up,” Larsen said.

This follows other previous successes of the Conservation and Marine Club. The club has also connected with the Charles River Conservancy where club members participated in a clean-up of the river. The club leaders have also helped out with the Porpoise Conservation Society, a non-profit group that works to preserve Porpoise species and their habitats. Weintraub and her co-leaders plan to host another fundraiser later on to raise even more money for the Porpoise Conservation Society.

Activities such as movie nights and clean-ups allow students to get involved with marine conservation. Whether it is in their future for careers or just hobbies, group members such as junior Grainne Mulligan help with and learn from this club.

“I will definitely stick with helping through this. The club has helped me find smaller ways and volunteering events that I can go to and really help, even on a smaller scale,” Mulligan said.

Mulligan is not the only one; club members and presidents alike are able to see the impacts they make when participating. Through collaborative planning sessions filling X-blocks, or hours spent fundraising to save the cute Vaquita porpoises, Weintraub said she has been given resources to gain education and experience on the issue.

“I think it’s really important and cool how you can make change as a student. Even if it’s not the biggest change it’s definitely a start,” Weintraub said. “Doing something is always better than doing nothing.”