About the Founder
The Mind Behind The Action and How it Led to Action Activists
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Ever since an early age, our founder Paige Scott-Cooper, knew no matter what she did in life, all she wanted to do was help people. At one point she even wanted to be the President of the United States! It wasn’t until the age of 14, when she got her first summer job, she would discover what she was truly meant to be.
In the summer of 2016, right after she turned 14, Scott-Cooper started her first job under the Philadelphia Youth Network for Mural Arts Philadelphia. Here, she learned to express herself through her art, creating meaningful pieces that could say things in a way she didn’t know how. Mural Arts then instituted an opportunity for Paige called the Park Powers Project. This project focused on calling out the key people necessary in making renovations to Mifflin Square Park in South Philly and building a coalition to help see it through. Through this, Scott-Cooper began to use her voice to express her thoughts and feelings more and more often. She’d meet with city officials and leaders to discuss major issues regarding, not just Mifflin Square, but an array of Philadelphia Parks. The students working at the South Philly High Mural Arts that summer were also commissioned to design a ‘trash mobile’ for a new sub-unit of Mural Arts that was launching called Trash Academy. What she didn’t know is that this would be her opportunity to continue using her voice for change.
During the beginning of her fall semester as a freshman in high school, Scott-Cooper officially joined Trash Academy. They taught her that waste issues are deeper than just trash -- It’s a problem on political, scientific, and societal levels. Prior to this, Scott-Cooper already had a passion for civil rights justice. Once she learned about environmental issues on the societal and racial levels, it sparked her interest in environmental justice. Since that semester, Scott-Cooper has been a civil rights and environmental justice activist and practiced her activism through Trash Academy.
At the age of 17, when she was graduating high school during the 2020 pandemic, she had already amassed a number of accomplishments. She had spoken in front of thousands of people for the Youth Climate Strike, as well as MC’d the one following. She had spoken on a panel for the Park Powers Project. She had interviewed plenty of city officials including Councilman Squilla. She had even been on a billboard promoting the use of reusable bags in Philadelphia.
Her activism only continued to grow after her matriculation. In 2020, her and a few other students from her high school organized a Social Media Campaign in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. In November 2021, she organized her first ever protest all by herself that focused on Saving Our Black Youth for the justice of Fanta Bility and the wrongful incarcerations of 2 other Black male youth in the Sharon Hill community. In 2022, she interviewed international leader Matthew Lam Joar, a former Athlete Camp Coordinator and Communications Employee for the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation. Her most proud achievement though, is the founding of her first organization, Action Activists.
Action Activists first started out as just a plan for a simple college club. It was supposed to be a way for activists to network and learn from each other. But soon, Scott-Cooper realized there was more opportunity for this idea than just that. She realized there was an opportunity to cultivate the growth of the next generation of activists.
Hence, the idea of Action Activists as a youth organization was born. Scott-Cooper spent 3 years perfecting the idea and planning it in detail. She came up with the organizational structure, website design, organizational culture, and handbook during this time. By 2022, the organization had been being moved from the planning phase to the implementation phase.
Then on December 12th 2022, Action Activists officially launched.
