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Hundreds of students from across Michigan will soon be heading to the nation's capital urging lawmakers to pass bolder environmentally friendly laws. Two of the students packing their bags are from Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.
Northwestern Michigan College student Julia Hemphill is one out of more than 400---other students from across the state getting ready to make the trek to Washington, DC.
"It's going to be a conference, a workshop. There's going to be speakers, there's going to be concerts... basically it's going to be about 10,000 people from around the country who are concerned about the environment, the economy," said Hemphill.
Julia will be spending the weekend at Capitol Hill for the Power Shift ' 09 conference, an event that will bring together young people from all over each equally passionate and concerned about similar issues.
" I think I'm going to be meeting a lot of really genuine people who care about the same things I do. I'm concerned about our environment. I'm concerned about pollution, global warming," said Hemphill.
"Push the administrations right now in the beginning, because this is where it matters the most to kind of enforce environmental laws pertaining to coal plants and pretty much everything," said Colin Campbell.
Joining Julia on the trip is fellow student Colin Campbell.
" Mostly just going to soak in everything and then eventually kind of get my voice out there," Campbell said.
One of the goals of Power Shift ' 09 is to educate young leaders on new ideas, skills, and help build connections with each other.
" The 420 people from Michigan are going to be breaking off and talking about our state and the things we can do in our state and what we can talk about to the representatives on Monday when we are lobbying," Hemphill said.
While they are looking forward to meeting people from across the state and nation both Julia and Colin say they have bigger plans for when they get back.
" With so many heads put together and everybody's different inputs and ideas I think we can raise awareness to people in all of our communities. I think that we'll be able to change some things."
Power Shift ' 09 runs from Friday February 27 till March 2nd.
