Photography Submission by @NinaSchnitzel

Meet Nina Adarkar (she/her): the environmentalist skater from L.A. pushing for climate and food equality in BIPOC communities. 

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"Nina was first inspired to skate when her little sister, Laila, went to skate camp one summer in elementary school. Still, it was almost a decade before she bought her own board, now inspired by her high school friend Sara. Earlier this summer, she worked on a farm in Santa Cruz with Sara and her other best friends and was able to learn to skate around there. Now, Nina is in her senior year at UCLA studying Environmental Science and Food Studies. Besides cooking, she also loves cooking, hiking/backpacking, playing guitar, and fighting for environmental justice with the Environmentalists of Color Collective (@ecc.ucla). And ECC is a super great organization that was founded several years ago as some BIPOC students there were no environmental justice organizations on campus. There were a lot of sustainability organizations that fit into the White idea of environmentalism, focused on renewable energy, networking, environmental consulting, etc. ECC kicked off with a Climate Justice Forum, a panel featuring grassroots BIPOC activists hoping to spark a dialogue around climate justice and environmental racism in the UCLA and greater LA community. Sadly, we weren't able to do that with the pandemic, so we've been focusing on ECC as a healing space and making lots of art/writing pieces, and doing educational collaborations with other clubs to still spread the word
Nina has always thought of skating as something only grungy white dudes could do and is thankful to Laila, Sara, and the other skating ladies in her life that showed her that’s not true. Nina is pretty new to skating, but is grateful to magazines like this and shows like Betty on HBO that challenge the mainstream’s idea of skate culture, and highlight the womxn and POC!"-Nina Adarkar

Thank you so much Nina for writing such a lovely bio! You can check more of Nina, ECC, and the wonderful things happening by the BIPOC community at UCLA by visiting her Instagram! The ECC Food Zine can be viewed here! :)