The New Roots Institute Empowers Gen Z to End Factory Farming
The New Roots Institute is an American nonprofit empowering the next generation to end factory farming by giving them inspirational lessons
Los Angeles, October 9th, 2023— Members of the youngest generations (Generation Z and Generation Alpha) are clearly alarmed over the state of the planet, the suffering of farmed animals, food injustice, and the public health crisis caused by animal agriculture. Now, they have a new way to channel that anxiety into action!
The New Roots Institute is training tomorrow’s leaders with year-long fellowships for students motivated to dig deeper into the impacts of factory farming while being trained in effective communication, advocacy, and leadership skills.
UnchainedTV’s Jane Velez-Mitchell had a conversation about this initiative with LA’s Lead Educator Natalie Amezcua, and Parker Do, a senior at UCLA and a graduate of the New Roots Leadership Program. You can watch the entire conversation here:
The New Roots Institute
Natalie Amezcua is a humane educator and writer who spent the greater part of her twenties traveling extensively in Asia, Europe, and North & South America where the connections between community and education led her to animal rights. With a BA in Liberal Studies, a U.S. teaching license, and a Master’s degree in Humane Education from the Institute for Humane Education with Antioch University, Natalie’s work at New Roots Institute focuses on empowering thousands of high school and college students each year. The program gives students the know-how to make more sustainable, compassionate food choices and engages them in deep discussions about the impacts of factory farming. This is what Amezcua said the institute does:
“The New Roots Institute, formerly known as Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, is a nonprofit, and we aim to empower and train the next generation to end factory farming. We do that through our different educational programs. We have in-classroom education, we have our leadership program, and we are in classrooms. That is how we are engaging students… We are here to train them, to empower them, to give them the skills and knowledge needed.”
The institute tailors its lessons to whatever class the students are in, knowing there will always be an angle where factory farming is relevant. Amezcua explains more:
“In our lessons or seminars, we connect factory farming to what our audience cares most about, whether it’s a fashion course, an economy class, or an environmentally-focused lesson… We connect every issue that our audiences care most about to factory farming because factory farming is connected to every systematic issue, every social justice issue that we grapple with.”
“It’s really important what these fellows are doing in their campuses in creating that shift, that cultural shift.”— Natalie Amezcua, educator from the New Roots Institute
Making a Difference in Real Life
Parker Do is a senior at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a graduate of the New Roots Leadership Program. Last spring, Parker co-founded the Animal Welfare Alliance at UCLA and is building a diverse community of students devoted to compassionate and sustainable living. Parker is also the head organizer of a Model United Nations Conference (BruinMUN) with 2000 attendees, which for the first time will be catered with plant-based defaults. This is how they feel about the Institute:
“I was very lucky to be able to find the opportunity to have a Fellowship that focused on what I cared about, ending factory farming, the environment, and animal rights. Through the Institute I had bi-weekly lessons about different aspects of factory farming, and different methods of stopping it, as well as having direct mentorship from many of their connections to actually make those changes on my campus…”
Parker has already started to apply all that they have learned and made a difference:
“We’re working with our dining hall. We’re already in talks with the head chef about implementing some plant-powered Fridays so that we can have fully plant-based dining halls, as well as implementing an oat milk default.”
They explain how New Roots Fellowship operates:
“The New Roots Fellowship meets three times a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the amazing educators give us comprehensive lessons about factory farming and different ways to stop it, and then on Wednesdays, that’s when they go into details about how to actually implement an institutional campaign.”
“I think that the Institute has really equipped me with the skills, the knowledge, and especially the confidence, to really pursue what I care about, which is ending factory farming.”— Parker Do, senior UCLA student and graduate of the New Roots Leadership Program.
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