One of Long Beach’s brightest former students is leading the way in fighting climate change and training his community in disaster preparedness. Hamid Torabzadeh was named the 2022 Brower Youth Award recipient, an annual honor from nonprofit Earth Island Institute given to six students each year who are excelling in environmental activism.
Torabzadeh, a 2022 graduate from Long Beach Polytechnic High School’s PACE program, has been a part of the American Red Cross since his freshman year of high school and a leader of the organization’s READYTeens program since 2019.
Now a public health student at Brown University and a member of The American Red Cross National Youth Council, Torabzadeh is preparing his community to fight the ongoing consequences of climate change.
“It’s been a great opportunity to see how to get involved tangibly in the community,” Torabzadeh said. “I think Red Cross is a good first experience into what I can do as an individual in Long Beach and beyond.”
The Red Cross READYTeens program trains high school students throughout Los Angeles County to prepare for disaster preparedness, response and recovery as well as CPR, first aid, triage and emergency communications.
“In Long Beach, we’re already seeing the effects, even COVID—infectious diseases are going to be increasing because of climate [change]. All of these disasters are very intersectional and as they’re rising we have to figure out ways that community members can take the lead and be in charge of the response as much as possible.”
Hamid Torabzadeh
Torabzadeh has helped READYTeens amass more than 10,000 youth volunteers across the country and trained around 350 high school students in Los Angeles on fire and earthquake safety.
“The focus of the program is on saying, ‘You can be part of the solution.’” Torabzadeh said. “It really attracts kids like me who are interested in [the] health route, medical route … it also attracts people who want to find a way to be involved.”
The six students from across the country, including Torabzadeh, were invited to a week-long retreat in the Bay Area and recognized for their work in this year’s ceremony at Freight & Salvage on Oct. 18 in Berkeley, California.
Torabzadeh’s Red Cross journey began during his freshman year of high school. He got involved at the club level before joining the Long Beach chapter and helped to set up a blood drive at Poly, instructional CPR classes and the preparedness pillowcase project—all as a freshman.
The summer after his freshman year, one of Torabzadeh’s friends began the first READYTeens program, giving him the chance to lead students from Poly, Wilson, Cabrillo and several other local high schools.
The program encouraged him to become a field ambassador for the Los Angeles region of the Red Cross. Torabzadeh explained the importance of providing diversity and equity in commerce in relation to the environmental concerns facing the Port of Long Beach
“For example, the Port in Long Beach, those homes and the people who live there are being affected by all these [carbon dioxide] emissions, and are also going to be affected by rising sea levels,” Torabzadeh said.
Due to the ongoing effects of climate change, he said he is also concerned about the various challenging disasters looming such as forest fires and air pollution, which threaten the city’s historically underserved population.
“In Long Beach, we’re already seeing the effects, even COVID—infectious diseases are going to be increasing because of climate [change],” Torabzadeh said. “All of these disasters are very intersectional and as they’re rising we have to figure out ways that community members can take the lead and be in charge of the response as much as possible.”
Torabzadeh says the worst thing that could happen is for the Red Cross to be “contributing to the cycle” of inequity if they don’t lift up communities being hit the hardest.
“While we have to work to prevent climate change and a lot of its effects, we also need to prepare for the consequences by those who we have not yet convinced to prevent what’s happening,” Torabzadeh said.
To learn more about the American Red Cross READYTeens program, visit https://www.redcross.org/local/california/los-angeles/volunteer/youth-services-program/the-readyteens-program.html.
