‘I was just dumbfounded’: Trump kicks 15 high school students out of FEMA Youth Preparedness Council

“I was just steadfast,” Dolce said.

He became active in his hometown, where he organized marches and petitions to raise awareness about the intense heat and called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make such conditions eligible to obtain major disaster ads.

Before his first year of high school in 2024, Dolce got an opportunity to make his fears really hear: he became one of 15 students across the United States who were chosen to join the FEMA alert council, a 13 -year -old program for young people to get to know him and become ambassadors to prepare for disasters.

“This was a really great opportunity to participate in Fema and to get a specific seat on the table where we can develop resources through young people,” Dolce said.

Then signs of trouble came.

On January 16, youth were informed via e -mail that a peak summit was canceled in the country’s capital this summer. By February, students stopped listening from their advisers. The meetings stopped. After months of silence, the students got an email on August 1, saying that the program will be completed early.

He said: “We used to put a lot of time and effort in this space, and now it’s completely blocked.”

Fema has taken measures to ensure that she was “meager”

In an email to students reviewed by the Associated Press, the agency said that this step aims to “make sure that Fema is a deployed disaster force ready to support countries while they are taking the initiative to prepare and respond to disasters.”

The solution of the council, despite its occurrence through other discounts, reflects the repercussions of the chaotic changes in the agency in charge of managing the federal response to disasters. Since the start of the term of Republican President Donald Trump II, his administration has reduced the Fema employees in the thousands, was delayed in decisive emergency exercises, stopped certain survivor awareness efforts and canceled programs worth billions of dollars.

Dolce said that ignoring students also undermines flexibility.

“This field needs young people and we are pushing young people abroad,” he said. “The administration is basically only to give young people the middle finger to climate change.”

The largest federal programs related to youth and climate are also in disturbances.

In April, the management has reduced funding to America, the 30 -year -old Federal Agency for volunteering service. As a result, 2000 members of the National Civil Society Corps, who usually help recover from disasters, left their program early.

Fema did not answer questions about the reason for the closure of the Youth Council. In the e -mail bulletin last week, the agency said it would not recruit “until another notice.”

The council was established for students in grades from 8 to 11 for “combining young leaders interested in supporting the readiness of disasters and making a change in their societies,” according to the FEMA website.

Chris Reynolds, a retired lieutenant and a communication official in an emergency in the US Air Force, said that the lack of investment in youth training may undermine the efforts made to prepare and respond to more frequent and severe climate disasters.

“It is a lost opportunity for talent pipeline.” “I am more than 45 years old as an emergency director in my field. Where will this next staff come from?”

Some talk about a tremendous effect

The goal of the management of reducing the federal role in responding to disasters and putting more responsibility for the states to deal with the response to disasters and recovery may mean that local communities need more experience in emergency management.

“You are eliminating the participation of not only the next generation of emergency managers, but the next generation of community leaders, which I think is just a terrible mistake,” said Monica Sanders, a professor in the Emergency and Disaster Management Program at Georgetown University and its Emergency Management Center and the Center for law.

Sanders said that young people have a lot of knowledge to share with the FEMA as the agency did with them.

She said: “In many cultures, young people are preparing, organizing mutual aid, campaigns on the Internet, and uniting and finding people in ways that traditional emergency management cannot do.” “In order to lose the access to this base of knowledge is really unfortunate.”

Sujan Serjansh, one of the emerging high school schools from Siosit, New York, said he joined the council to continue his work in flexibility and climatic literacy in schools.

“I thought it was a way in which I could inflate the issues I was excited about,” he said.

SRIGANESH said he got a lot of program as it was continuing. He and Dols were in the same small group working on a community project to spread the resources of preparedness for farmers. They created a booklet with information about what to do before and after a disaster.

Even after the Fema staff stopped reaching the outside, Sriganesh and some of its peers continued at the meeting. They decided to end the project and are looking for ways to distribute their own booklet.

“It is a testament to the reason for our selection in the first place as members of the youth’s alert,” said Serganish. “We were able to adapt and flexibility regardless of what is going on.”