Fourth-year College student Dyanna Jaye has traveled the country on behalf of Invisible Children, biked halfway across Canada, and participated as a student delegate in the United Nations Lima Climate Change Conference.
After her first year in the Engineering School, Jaye was unsure of her direction at the University. She took a gap year in 2012 to work as a roadie for the Invisible Children, an organization centered on bringing awareness to the Lord’s Resistance Army and child soldiers of Central Africa. For 11 weeks, Jaye coordinated presentations on these issues across the United States.
“I think taking a year off from school is one of the best things people can do,” Jaye said. ”I came back knowing what I wanted to do [and] knowing the value of school a lot more. I switched my major and just fell in love with everything I was involved in.”
After returning to Charlottesville, Jaye became involved in numerous environmental organizations on Grounds — eventually deciding to co-found her own. She established the Climate Action Society in 2013 and later became chair of the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition — an effort to increase coordination among student advocacy groups across the state.
“That has been what I love the most of the work that I do,” she said. “It’s really cool to be connected to campuses across Virginia.”
After engaging with environmental work at the University, state and national level, Jaye took her ideas to the international stage. She worked to amplify the voices of young activists with a group called SustainUS. The organization sends young people to various United Nations conferences — an effort to build a powerful presence of young ideas.
“[Climate change is] a really unique issue in that most of the decisions being made affect youth strongly,” Jaye said. “The decisions being made by people now will affect us more than it will affect them.”
Jaye traveled to Lima, Peru for five weeks with SustainUS this past Winter Break. The trip consisted of a half-week student conference and two weeks at a United Nations Climate Change Conference.
“As a student it was really invigorating to participate in that because I have been studying it so much and it’s invigorating to see knowledge applied,” Jaye said. “It’s not just like I’m sitting in a classroom studying policy, but I’m actually seeing those things play out in front of me.”
Jaye said the conference made her more cognizant of the challenges climate change presents and the role youth movements can play in finding solutions.
“[The UN Conference is] a place of progress but it’s not the answer, and I definitely saw that,” she said. “It made me realize how much more room there is for people, power and movements. The response to climate change is not going to come from a top-down policy decision on climate change. It involves people and it involves building things from the ground up.”
By working with grassroots movements, attending lobby meetings and coordinating wider efforts, Jaye said she hopes to assist youth movements in holding local, state, national and international leaders accountable.
Climate Action Society Co-Founder Lia Cattaneo, a third-year College student, said Jaye is fundamentally “a people person.”
“She believes in the power of people and the power of people to change the world,” Cattaneo said. “She sees grassroots movements and people coming together as a force for change.”
Jaye will graduate from the University this May with a Bachelor of Science in environmental science and a Bachelor of Arts in Global Developmental Studies. She intends to continue coordinating environmental movements and mobilizing youth after graduation.
“As long as I’m young, I just want to help other people realize their power as young people to effect change,” she said. “We are really powerful.”
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