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Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in partnership with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, 1854 Treaty Authority, University of Wisconsin Extension’s G-WOW program, and Lake Superior Estuarine Research Reserve are proud to provide the Climate Strong-Building Tribal Youth Leadership for Climate Resiliency program. Our three-year project aims to increase the knowledge and readiness of middle to high school students to deal with the impacts of extreme weather and environmental hazards that face the Ojibwe Ceded Territories (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan) and build capacity for increased climate change community resiliency curriculum in the classroom. Climate change impacts everyone, but for indigenous peoples it threatens culturally significant traditions, such as wild rice harvesting, that relies on sustainable fish, plant, and wildlife resources. These resources are critical for subsistence, spiritual and cultural needs, and treaty rights. Culturally relevant, place-based education is an important tool to involve students, in particular, underrepresented students, in developing critical thinking skills to assess the issue of community resiliency to extreme weather events and engaging in action to help resolve it. In order to achieve our objectives, we will aim our educational efforts toward youth first, as well as reaching the communities we serve. Each year, six residential youth camps (18 total) will be hosted within the Ojibwe Ceded Territories. Each three-day camp will be focused on investigating issues of community resiliency, adaption, and mitigation associated with increasing extreme weather events as well as natural environmental hazards. Camps will use place-based, experiential lessons to teach resiliency issues demonstrated by climate change effects on Ojibwe culturally important natural resources. Our project will train formal and informal educators throughout the Ojibwe Ceded Territories on how to use indigenous climate curriculum using tribal traditional ecological knowledge and NOAA assets to investigate community climate resiliency issues. Using both teacher “train the trainer” workshops and our camps, this project will create a network of formal K-12 and informal educators trained to become leaders in providing culturally relevant climate resiliency outreach to students. We will increase community resiliency literacy through six community outreach events each year (18 total) that will highlight resiliency issues facing our region and the research being done on landscape and ecological vulnerabilities through NOAA and tribal assets. Our goals are increased community resiliency literacy and adaptation of stewardship behaviors that reduce climate change impacts and increases adaption and mitigation behaviors by our participants. These behaviors will help increase stewardship practices reducing extreme weather impacts affecting the sustainability of culturally relevant resources, thereby preserving important cultural, spiritual, subsistence, and treaty rights practices.

Shedd Aquarium has launched a large-scale effort to address the long-standing need to better connect citizens in the Great Lakes region to their local Great Lakes watershed, to engage them in making positive changes to help the ecosystem, and to engage decision-makers and leaders to enact large scale change to improve the ecosystem over the long term. Through this award, Shedd is positioning itself strategically as the regional hub for Great Lakes education and behavior change by promoting Great Lakes civic engagement. Shedd Aquarium's Center for the Great Lakes is designed to bring scientists, business and government leaders, visionaries, and Great Lakes citizens together to formalize a strategic framework for increasing Great Lakes literacy and fostering Great Lakes stewardship. With the help of leading organizations: NOAA, COSEE Great Lakes, and members of the Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition, a new vision for the Great Lakes region is being created. This civic engagement project is producing needed outcomes: increasing Great Lakes literacy while promoting policies of sustainability that ultimately will support the adoption of a stewardship ethic among our target audiences in the Midwest. Shedd's efforts empower citizens and civic entities to be critical thinkers who fully participate in the advancement of a sustainable society.

The Wild Center’s Convening Young Leaders for Climate Resilience in New York State project increased climate literacy among high school students and teachers in New York City, the Catskills and the Adirondacks and gave students the leadership skills to help their communities respond to the impacts of climate change. The program worked with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Delaware County, the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School in Brooklyn, and Action for the Climate Emergency (formerly known as Alliance for Climate Education), along with NOAA, the New York State Office of Climate Change and NYSERDA. In the three project regions of New York State, project partners established Youth Climate Summits and Youth Climate Leadership Practicums as well as built on educators’ interests through Teacher Climate Institutes and communicated climate change science and resilience through community outreach activities. By the conclusion of the project, we had worked directly with 3,126 high school students, 1,124 teachers and 2,333 members of the public, each of whom gained a better understanding of the impacts of climate change in New York State, a greater capacity to make informed decisions about the threats to their own regions, and a stronger connection with other community members and ongoing resiliency work. Convening Young Leaders demonstrated significant leadership in connecting with New York State’s Climate Smart Communities program. Seven small, rural communities across New York State engaged in Climate Smart Communities (CSC) due to youth involvement. This emerged after partners at the NYS Office of Climate Change offered to present on CSC at multiple Youth Climate Summits. Students attended the CSC workshop, incorporated CSC into their climate action plans, contacted their local government, and encouraged them to join the program. Reaching out to municipal officials and presenting at community board meetings were tremendous learning opportunities for students, regardless of whether the municipalities joined the program. In 2020, two particularly engaged communities, Saranac Lake and Homer, received Bronze Certification through the CSC program and were formally recognized for their accomplishments. 

Empowering Rural Youth for Community Climate Resilience in New York State is a three-year project led by The Wild Center in partnership with the Finger Lakes Institute at Hobart and William Smith College and the Alliance for Climate Education, which builds on the achievements of Convening Young Leaders for Climate Resilience, a project previously funded by NOAA. Today’s youth are deeply concerned about the impacts of climate change in their communities and increasingly demand positive action and a role in decision-making. The proposed collaboration will support the development of leadership skills for rural youth by creating programming that demonstrates best practices for students and teachers to engage and partner with local municipalities on climate resilience planning. The project will also increase awareness of the NY State Climate Smart Community (CSC) program, a national model. Over the next 3 years the project will: 1) Develop pathways for young people--specifically in rural areas--to effectively partner with decision-makers in their home communities through partnering with the NY State Climate Smart Community (CSC) program; 2) Increase climate literacy, education and action among high school students through place-based Youth Climate Summits and intensive Youth Climate Leadership Retreats; 3) Increase teacher comprehension and confidence to prioritize climate change education instruction and mentor students; and 4) Formalize the NY State Youth Climate Summit network by establishing a community of practice centered on sharing best practices and actions that align with NY State climate change adaptation and resilience planning. This project aligns with NY State’s climate resiliency planning by building on successful and current partnerships with the NY State Office of Climate Change, NY State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and NOAA’s Climate Program Office to connect project participants with cutting edge science, hazard assessments, and established community climate resilience programs. The project will serve 700-800 high school students, 60-80 high school teachers, and 60 youth leaders in New York State. The project is also designed to reach a much wider audience, including 30 rural decision-makers and community members, as well as 50-60 formal/informal educators. Project documentation includes a Guide to the NY State Climate Smart Community Program for Students and Educators, and a Youth and Local Government for Climate Resilience Workshop Module, which will benefit other Youth Climate Summits and be disseminated through the online toolkit and through the national network of youth climate summits. Additionally, the project will support a community of practice for informal and formal educators across NY State who are working on new and existing Youth Climate Summits to provide the opportunity to align with the CSC program, collaborate on best practices, and co-create strategies for engagement.

A collaboration of five key states, an array of scientists and educators, and an experienced science curriculum team will develop and establish a National Model Earth Science Lab Course, providing standards and exemplary activities that will reach hundreds of thousands of students annually. The team will create a lab handbook with guidelines and exemplary activities in Earth system science and environmental literacy. All materials will be published on the web and available for free to teachers and students. The initial set of four exemplary labs will engage students in field experiences, classroom experiments and active use of data and computer visualizations dealing with oceans, atmosphere and other NOAA domains. These hands-on learning experiences will help students develop environmental literacy, build deep understandings of Earth as a system, and apply scientific thinking, problem-solving and data analysis. The participating states view this as filling a crucial gap in the approval and implementation of Earth science as a standard high school lab science. This project builds on planning done in a series of projects: National Conference on the Revolution in Earth Science Education, State Alliances for Earth Science Education, and Planning Grant for Earth System Science as a High School Lab Science. This National Model responds directly to essential needs expressed by the states. The labs will comply with national and state standards for Earth science and meet requirements for a true lab science course. This project is bold and ambitious, but also essential for states striving to strengthen their high school Earth science offerings, and it is a practical response to NOAA's need to infuse its resources into the fabric of public Earth science education.