In July 2024, I taught my first Solarpunk Design workshop for high school youth with Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago.

At a moment when so many young people are handed fear instead of possibility, we turned toward imagination and toward each other. Students designed mutual aid tools and shared spaces rooted in care, safety, and collective problem-solving. They wrestled with questions like:

How do we hold each other when carceral systems fail us? What does real inclusion actually look like — across ability, identity, lived experience?

Watching them work was something. Their concepts were grounded, specific, and full of conviction. These are our worldbuilders, everyone.