By: MeAnna Smith
San Bernardino’s dedication to the future of local youth was thoroughly expressed on Wednesday, Nov. 12 during San Bernardino Unified School District’s third annual Future Green Leaders Summit. The event featured five different workshops for students to engage in hands-on activities, giving them experience with careers surrounding sustainable energy and clean energy. The event hopes to serve a greater purpose in allowing underserved young students to believe that they are capable of pursuing high paying STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) career pathways.
The organizer of this event, Southern California Regional Energy Network (SocalREN) described this event as a way to “level the playing field” for schools in regions disproportionately affected by pollution. Since its launch in 2023, the Future Green Leaders Summit has reached more than 2,100 students across Southern California. Students were greeted with goodiebags and music before receiving a speech from Mayor Helen Tran to jump-start the day. During this speech she tells students “You all have superpowers … own it, ignite it, and embrace it.”
Students traveled from workshop to workshop discovering what it is that interests them the most. Workshop activities included 3D modeling, solar energy demos, electric car simulators, and STEM trivia challenges. Eighth grade students Nathan Spencer and Gary Chan from Richardson PREP HI Middle School were incredibly excited to share their thoughts on the event. When asked what their favorite workshop was, they both replied saying “the architect workshop, we both want to be engineers.” Nathan also explains “I want to build things. In my robotics class I built a claw machine, and I really enjoyed that.” When asked, Nathan says this event has definitely reaffirmed his idea that he wants to invent things and become an engineer.
An image of the 3D modeling workshop set up in the basement level of the Enterprise Building.
I discovered more passion for the future of the youth while speaking to superintendent Mauricio Arellano. Arellano says that this event “is motivating and teaches students that learning isn’t just out of a book.” He also credits Mayor Helen Tran for “starting to create the mindset that good things are happening in San Bernardino, and the more we start to believe it and the more that we pump up the young people who are here, the more the city will start to transform itself.”
Francisco Parra Camacho, SocalREN workforce education and training representative, was also very vocal about SocalREN’s dedication to the youth and the pursuit of clean energy jobs. When asked what SocalREN’s hopes for the outcome of this event were, he says, “Our hope is that the kids get motivated, they get excited, they get exposed to the possibility of turning our challenges like climate change into a career.”
The event cultivated intense energy of inspiration, innovation, and hope, with much thanks to the venue of the event, the remarkable Enterprise Building in the heart of downtown. I was also given the pleasure to speak with the owners of the Enterprise Building Alan Stanley and Alisha Stanley as well as their son, Ryan Stanley. The history behind the Enterprise Building is truly remarkable. With its rich history being first established in 1927 and having undergone extreme renovations, it stood as a physical representation of rebuilding, longevity, and community to students and teachers.
Left to right: Enterprise Building owner Alisha Stanley, Mayor Helen Tran, building owner Alan Stanley.
The Stanley family aims to open the building up to anyone who seeks community and is dedicated to return downtown San Bernardino back to the beautiful, booming, and innovative square that it once was. Alan Stanley shares with me that he was initially planning to build a data center within the Enterprise Building but that when he saw the building he thought “I can put a data center anywhere, this is different, I can put something here that can actually make a difference.” Since then the Stanley family has spent much of their time dedicated to further developing the building and its surroundings. Ryan Stanley has since commissioned various local artists to cover the alley in a variety of murals and is currently working on a museum that contains historical artifacts and exhibits within the Enterprise Building to show appreciation to the past of the city.
