On October 9, 2025, Barry University hosted the first Together for Tomorrow Summit, the inaugural gathering of South Florida's Youth Ecological Action Network. Thirteen local Catholic high schools sent students to campus, for a total of 195 participants, who spent the day in a series of integral ecology workshops led in partnership with four Laudato Si' community partners.
The Summit is the first of three annual installments of programming for the network, designed to introduce students to the theological foundations of integral ecology, to the organizations already doing this work in Miami-Dade, and to one another. Watching nearly 200 high schoolers and teachers from ten different Catholic High schools in South Florida discover that they are not the only ones who care about this may have been the most valuable outcome of the day.
The Summit engaged students in workshops with several Laudato Si’ Partners including the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Miami Waterkeeper, Urban Greenworks and resident garbologist and biology faculty, Dr. Anita Zavodska. Participants got to interact with their peers from other schools, meet community organizations, and get energized around their own school’s efforts around integral ecology.
We are grateful to our Laudato Si' community partners for shaping the day's workshops, and to the teachers and administrators who brought their students. Together for Tomorrow will return in fall 2026, and the network it launched has grown considerably since.
The Youth Ecological Action Network programming is made possible through a generous gift from Dr. Sam and Carol Nappi.