Teens Take Action: How our Youth Group is Making a Difference
What items did students of the past need most for school? Pencils, notebooks, and textbooks.
And today? Laptops.
My volunteer organization, the Youth Care Club (YCC), has partnered with C2K for years, gathering volunteers to refurbish electronics and organizing computer distribution events. At these events, we get to hand families their very first laptops, which is often the most meaningful part of the experience.
To teens, it is no secret that school-issued computers fail to serve as general-use computers. Many are old and slow, others don’t let you install the useful applications, among a plethora of other issues. So when I see friends ditch their “antiquated” iPhones and MacBooks for the latest models, I can’t help but think how wasteful that is.
Only 12.5% of e-waste is currently recycled, and as the fastest-growing waste stream, the toxic materials can leach from landfills into the earth and our waterways. We lose a lot of resources from simply discarding e-waste: a ton of disposed cellphones contains more gold than a ton of mined ore.
How We Are Helping
At YCC, we started e-recycling drives at local schools because we knew there were better options than throwing away old devices or leaving them forgotten in storage.
Oftentimes, people don’t even want to hoard these devices in their homes. Our completely student-organized drives give them a place to donate electronics to not only prevent pollution, but also allow C2K to help refurbish them.
Beyond our environmental impact, we’ve also engaged the youth community to take initiative and be responsible for the electronic devices in our increasingly digital lives. From our quarterly drives during the 2024–25 school year, more than 25 student volunteers contributed over 275 hours, helping sort and ship around 100 boxes of e-waste to C2SDK.
At YCC, we believe you don’t need to be an adult to help bridge the digital divide. Teens can make a difference by donating unused devices or giving even a couple hours of volunteer time. Through our e-recycling drives and other projects, we hope to inspire more young people to take action, whether that means helping a child receive their first laptop or starting a community initiative of their own.
Guest Blogger: Lawrence Liu, a Youth Care Club volunteer.
Youth Care Club is a student-run volunteer organization affiliated with the American Chinese Culture and Education Foundation.