By Nicholas Bostick

Editor-in-Chief

This year Brookhaven College will host Dallas County Community College District’s 5th annual Sustainability Summit. The event will feature the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., as keynote speaker.

The event will take place from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 2, and coincide with Brookhaven’s annual Earth Day Fest. The summit will feature several workshops on topics ranging from urban farming to corporate sustainability, and is open to the public, according to The Dallas Morning News and the official event flyer.

“Our keynote speaker is going to be very interesting,” Brookhaven Director of Sustainability Carrie Schweitzer said. “He’s been involved in a lot of interesting organizing around the climate movement, around democracy issues and the more I am involved with sustainability the more I realize that this is about citizen advocacy.”

Yearwood is president and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, an activist group that seeks to “mobilize, educate, and engage young people, ages 14 to 40, on the social, issues that directly impact their lives and communities,” according to hiphopcaucus.org.

He has also worked closely with many other advocacy organizations including his time as the national director of the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign, which worked to help survivors of hurricane Katrina in 2005. He was also listed among Ebony Magazine’s “100 most powerful African Americans,” in 2010.

“The climate change movement needs to diversify,” Schweitzer said. “We need more people involved. So I hope there will be some students in the audience to hear that and feel inspired.”

During the summit Brookhaven will also hold its annual Earth Day celebration, where Schweitzer said, students can learn more about environment issues.

Schweitzer also said the event will include music, refreshments and a sidewalk theater showing by local performance art group, Circus Freaks.

“We’re just excited,” she said. “There’s a lot going on and we have been working on this since June.”

Those interested in attending this event can visit click here for more information, and to register for the event.