Ecopsychology has demonstrated the need to reestablish the moral relationship between human beings and their surroundings while promoting the proenvironmental behavior needed to confront the current ecological crisis. However, this individual level approach has resulted in interventions that isolate individuals from their historical, social, and cultural contexts. Moreover, missing from the literature is an analysis of identity formation and proenvironmental socialization in children and youth. In this article, I will present findings from an ethnographic case study with a group of young environmental activists in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, that describes the interconnectedness of collective practices and individual development. This study demonstrates how young activists enact their environmental identities through the transformative and collaborative process of teaching others. By caring for and working with elementary school children, this group of high school and college students learns to behave in ways that are ecologically conscious while, at the same time, fulfilling their social role as mentors and environmental activists. Understanding how children and adolescents develop their attitudes and behaviors toward the environment through social interactions is paramount to the possibility of building a new society.
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