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The FH Faunteroy Community Enrichment Center will lead intergenerational efforts to build climate resilience and address complex environmental problems with Ward 7 residents through a model built on self-determination and collaboration with public and private partners. The project’s geographic focus is on Ward 7, home to not only the majority of single-family homes in Washington, DC’s 100-year floodplain, but also a predominantly Black population that faces increased climate vulnerability due to socio-economic stressors and legacies of systemic racism. The Ward 7 Resilience Hub Community Committee is the lead project partner, with collaborators including the DC Department of Energy and Environment, Harrison Institute for Public Law at Georgetown University Law Center, NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office, and additional support from NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Program. Project goals, centered around Ward 7 residents, are to: (1) reshape workforce development programs and initiatives; (2) increase environmental literacy and civic participation; and (3) create community-driven decision-making processes and structures that guide the development of resilience hubs in the District. The full project title is “Nothing Without Us: Building Environmental Literacy, Resilience, and Sustainability in DC through a Multi-Partner, Community-Led Approach.” Activities will include workforce development programming, environmental education, and convenings for and with the partner organizations to develop promising practices for community resilience hubs. This collaboration will build a climate-ready workforce among Ward 7 residents, support community action and advocacy, and position residents to be leaders in the implementation of the District’s sustainability and climate plans, including Climate Ready DC, Resilient DC, and Sustainable DC 2.0.

The North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) will assess environmental literacy levels of middle school students and compare the results to baseline data collected nationwide in 2007. In this study the research team will solicit and select a purposeful sample of schools and other program sites that represent the following categories: (1) Networks, e.g., Lieberman schools, Earth Force/Green Schools, Blue Ribbon School, etc.; (2) Programs, e.g. WET, WILD, PLT, IEEIA, etc.); (3) environmentally focused Charter and Magnet Schools; and (4) Independent Schools. By comparing 2008 programmatic assessments to the established 2007 base-line levels of environmental literacy (while investigating the variables that may contribute to school wide or classroom levels of literacy), the field of environmental education and NOAA may make future curricular and program decisions that are grounded in sound scientific data. The Research Team will review these results and generate a report to be submitted to NOAA and NAAEE (and other partners as needed). These results comprise a presentation at the annual NAAEE Conference and other venues. Articles will be submitted to professional newsletters and journals.

In 1999, The Ocean Project completed a comprehensive opinion research on public attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of the ocean ever conducted. The research identified a broad vacuum in public understanding of the ocean; a fundamental issue of ocean literacy. To further increase effectiveness in building ocean literacy, this project updates and expands The Ocean Project's research to create a more highly detailed database of public awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about the ocean and the impact of climate change on the ocean. It develops recommendations to enable free-choice learning educators to improve the ocean and climate literacy of their visitors. The study includes a comprehensive review of existing literature, qualitative and quantitative research, analysis of the data, and publication and broad dissemination, including recommendations for programs and content that build ocean and climate literacy. The work done by The Ocean Project is helping the ocean education community better understand the motivations, psychology, and emotions behind segments of the public's attitudes toward the ocean. These data are essential as the institutions, agencies and organizations of the ocean community work together and independently to engage people, inform decision-makers, and enhance ocean and climate literacy throughout the Nation.

Project 2061, the science education reform initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), proposes to identify and translate into classroom materials a range of real-world phenomena (e.g., objects, systems, events) and representations (e.g., models, diagrams, simulations) based largely on data from NOAA's Earth observation systems. These materials will be designed to help increase middle school students' understanding of essential ideas about weather and climate. Our objective is to provide a wide audience of teachers, curriculum developers, teacher education faculty, and professional development providers with online access to a set of high-quality and interrelated activities built around Earth, ocean, and atmospheric phenomena and representations that can supplement or enrich their existing lessons or be integrated into new curriculum materials. This collection of climate literacy materials will be carefully aligned to the learning goals in Climate Literacy: the Essential Principles of Climate Science and in national and state science content standards. By disseminating this online collection widely within the science education community, we also aim to expand the use of NOAA-related scientific data, simulations, animations, and other types of representations in middle school curriculum materials and instruction and to stimulate research on how these materials can be used most effectively.

Community Resilience from the Youth Up addresses the urgent need to increase resilience in Detroit and southeast Michigan by partnering high school students and teachers with place-based educators, climate scientists, adaptation professionals, municipalities, and community organizations. Using a Place-Based Education (PBE) process and the Climate Resilience from the Youth Up curriculum, students and teachers will explore local climate impacts and develop resilience strategies that protect vulnerable school campuses, households, and neighborhoods from the increased occurrence and intensity of heat waves, storm events, and flooding. Through their involvement in this project, students will increase their climate and civic literacy, actively contribute to broader sustainability initiatives, increase their awareness of and interest in climate adaptation careers, and engage in solution-focused work that inspires hope in their communities. Students will share their work locally and regionally, and teachers and project partners will contribute to regional and national conversations about community resilience education and creating communities of belonging for both educators and youth. Using an ecojustice approach to PBE, this project locates community and climate resilience within a broader vision of youth and adult health and well-being and is grounded in the belief that issues of social and ecological justice are inseparable. It builds on the relationships, partnerships, and educational strategies that were developed and refined in the previous project, Climate resilience from the youth up: A place-based strategy uniting high school students, educators, residents, community organizations, and municipalities in southeast Michigan, and will use them to solidify a community resilience education framework. Building teacher and student capacity to engage in resiliency-focused place-based learning while fostering their identities as change-agents in their communities reflects NOAA’s education mission and goals. This project is led by the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS), housed at Eastern Michigan University and part of the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative (GLSI), a statewide PBE network. Project partners include GLISA, the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP), Izzie, LLC, Detroit City Council Green Task Force, Ypsilanti Sustainability Commission, NOAA’s Climate Program Office, Great Lakes B-WET, Michigan Sea Grant, and schools throughout southeast Michigan.

Climate Resilient Flint seeks to develop climate resilience literacy in Flint, Michigan through neighborhood placemaking projects and green workforce education and training. High urban blight and low climate literacy are expected to leave many of the city’s residents susceptible to anticipated rises in regional summer temperatures and heavy precipitation events. Building on evidence illustrating that social cohesion, education, and a sense of place are key factors in communities’ abilities to adapt to outside shocks or stressors, this project aims to foster climate resilience by engaging underserved and vulnerable neighborhoods in a three-year science-to-civics learning program. Priority neighborhoods will participate in organized deliberative forums to discuss regional climate changes and local impacts before developing plans to repurpose vacant neighborhood lots into spaces that use passive cooling and stormwater management strategies to reduce vulnerability to heat and precipitation. As community members become aware of the connections among climate impacts, climate resilience, and community wellbeing, they will develop the knowledge to further their civic engagement in local social, sustainability, environmental, and climate issues. Additionally, Climate Resilient Flint will develop and teach an environmental literacy and job readiness curriculum for returning citizens with barriers to employment. The Empowerment Through Innovation and Knowledge (EPIK) education program will help participants build a holistic job-seeker profile by complimenting hands-on learning of green infrastructure skills with place-based environmental literacy education embedded within local and regional climate contexts. Through the EPIK curriculum, participants will develop the skills and credentials to advance their competitiveness in Michigan’s green infrastructure job market. With the goal of reducing differential access to education, knowledge, and resources, this project reflects NOAA’s education mission to further equitable environmental literacy and climate resilience capacity by employing active learning and knowledge co-production. Climate Resilient Flint is a collaborative effort between Kettering University, Environmental Transformation Movement of Flint, M.A.D.E. Institute, Neighborhood Engagement Hub, Genesee Conservation District, and NOAA’s Office of Education and Climate Program Office.