The year ahead: collaborative climate work in schools and communities: are you in?
What do you think? Is 2024 the year we make ambitious progress on addressing climate change? I’m curious about your answer, and even more curious about how you frame climate issues when you think about them. What kind of problem do you see climate change as, and for whom? Who is the “we” who should be getting involved? What are the tools, frameworks, and mindsets we might need to create ambitious action? (Feel free to leave your comments and questions here, I’d love to hear your thoughts!)
Over the coming year, MakeKnowledge is going to be moving around the landscape of climate action in schools and communities, helping you think about how to create ambitious and sustained climate action, and what factors can get in the way.
Besides writing about the landscape of climate action, we continue to work on some generative projects that demonstrate some of our core commitments, while helping us deepen our knowledge. Here are a few examples of the work we’re doing in 2024:
We’re working with partners from across the US as part of the Accelerating Climate Capacity, Engagement, and Leadership Summit (ACCELS), examining at how we might scale up climate career pathways with education, government, nonprofit and philanthropic partners. We’ll be making recommendations by this summer, so stay tuned.
For public schools and districts in California, we’re creating resources and programs that will help them launch and expand rich climate career pathways for students, taking advantage of supports and funding such as the new Golden State Pathways Program.
For the Fall, we’re planning a conference about youth climate entrepreneurship, centering the creative work of youth and young adults who are tackling the climate crisis in innovative ways. Our hope is then to follow this up with a conference on the policy implications for schools, districts, and states: how might we prepare all of our students to help invent the new solutions, organizations, and careers we need?
We’re also excited to be talking to new schools and districts this year about our Data to Design climate project. We prototyped this work two years ago with a handful of school communities, showing them how they can use data about the school community’s carbon impact as a basis for student-generated design interventions. For instance, students considered how they might lower the carbon impact of all our students and adults getting to and from campus every day. This project demonstrates the power of sustained, collaborative action.
Finally, we’re also really interested in school-community climate and sustainability collaborations that start from a community need or question.
Over the coming months, we’ll be talking more about these projects, and about the ways we can work together to give climate action the creativity and energy it deserves (as well as how to avoid the common pitfalls that keep our efforts from having impact). I hope you’ll follow along. And get in touch if you’re interested in exploring any of these ideas and projects in a deeper way in your own setting.