Climate change affects people in deeply personal ways, often motivating them to take action. For Indian American youth activists Padma Balaji and Sarah Adkar, their environmental journeys began with personal and family experiences that inspired them to lead change in California’s Bay Area.
Padma Balaji, a senior at Mission San Jose High School, traces her environmental consciousness to her mother’s mindful lifestyle. Her family practices resource conservation, avoiding waste and limiting consumption—values rooted in centuries of Indian cultural traditions. Yet, Padma’s climate awareness deepened when she witnessed the devastation of climate change firsthand through her relatives in Chennai, India. A massive flood left her aunt’s home submerged, cutting off access to clean water and food. This personal connection to environmental crises pushed Padma to join the Bay Area Youth Climate Summit and later take on a leadership role in Silicon Valley Youth Climate Action (SVYCA). For Padma, working alongside other young activists has transformed her climate anxiety into a hopeful, collective mission for change.
Sarah Adkar’s environmental advocacy began with a health scare. A senior at Washington High School in Fremont, Sarah experienced severe eye issues in 2022. Doctors traced the problem not to her vision but to her environment—wildfire smoke and microplastics from her traditional Indian Kathak dance makeup. This revelation led Sarah to explore how climate change directly affects human health. Now, she is a youth advocate with the Global Consortium on Climate and Health’s ‘Neuro-Climate Working Group,’ researching the intersection of environmental change and neurological health.
Together, Padma and Sarah co-founded the Fremont Climate Action team under SVYCA, recruiting 25 local students and expanding their network to neighboring cities. Their team advocates for climate literacy in schools, pushing for climate justice lessons to be part of required ethnic studies curricula.
Sarah recently became SVYCA’s Youth Director and is organizing this year’s Climate IMPACT Summit on August 9th at the Campbell Heritage Theatre. The event will feature workshops on sustainable careers, environmental solutions, and policy engagement. Sarah hopes the summit will inspire Indian American youth to see sustainability as integral to every profession, proving that climate action can be part of any career path.
