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Teenager Karen Lucarelli wants United Methodists to party to save the environment! The suburban Pittsburgh high school student  is promoting Green Cleaning parties, a sort of Tupperware event with a twist.

 "It's really taken off," said Karen, who may be the youngest district social action chair in the entire United Methodist Women organization. “My main goal is to put environmental justice goals into perspective so people see how they can make a difference by taking small steps like using cleaning products that don’t harm the environment,” she said.

Lucarelli encourages UMW members, as well as youth and anyone else, to organize the Green Cleaning Parties, where guests work together to make their own environmentally friendly cleaning products from ingredients such as vinegar, borax and Ivory soap. “You learn how to make the things together, so it’s fun,” Karen explained. “It’s also a good platform to discuss other issues --and everyone leaves with a box of cleaning products.”

Karen’s efforts to save the planet landed her a spot on the General Board of Global Ministries’ Women’s Division Green Team, where the Bethel Park High School student is the youngest member. Despite her relative youth, however, when the high school junior talks about working for environmental and social justice, she displays considerable knowledge and experience.

Her younger sister Jamie is following in Karen's footsteps as an advocate for the environment and is a member of the UMW’s Consultative Group of Young Women ages 13-25. Consultative Group members serve for two years and meet once each summer to evaluate existing programs involving teens or college/university women, advise the Women’s Division on resource development, and develop goals for attracting young women to the UMW.

Jamie said she and Karen first became interested in social issues at the Western PA School of Mission when she was about 7 years old and their mother Joan was dean of the children’s school. “Since then we’ve been sort of taken under the wing of the UMW,” said Karen, who served more recently as the youth representative for the School of Mission organizing team. Karen is also president of the Rotary-sponsored Interact club at her high school.

In her role as Pittsburgh District social action chair, Karen and her mother traveled to Washington, DC for the 2009 Ecumenical Advocacy Days. Arriving a day early she and 46 other social action and environmental justice leaders shared organizing tips and boned up on legislation affecting women, children, youth. The “Enough for All Creation” ecumenical advocacy event convened more than 600 people from various denominations and faith groups to focus on the need for legislative action around climate change. The pre-conference event was also a time for UMW social action coordinators and Green Team members to share the wide range of issues they’re addressing in their regions. Karen shared “recipes” she distributes at the “Green Cleaning Parties. Later she and other Pennsylvanians visited the office of Congressman Tim Murphy and U.S Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey.