The Youth for a Cool Earth Program (YCE) is designed to empower youth to become environmental leaders and advocate to their peers, school, family, and community, giving students an opportunity to join the fight against climate change in the Bay Area. The program takes a multi-faceted approach to empower students with practical skills and knowledge that they can use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Thanks to a grant from Santa Clara Valley Water District, Youth for a Cool Earth was able to train 461 youth and reach 7,144 more youth and community members through social media posts, a poster contest, and personal outreach.

As part of the program, students participate in a number of different activities designed to help them to combat climate change. Students are educated about the nature, the causes and effects of climate change, and why it is something that they should care about and receive leadership and peer mentoring training to help them become effective student activists. Breathe California offers guidance as students develop and implement projects that will help combat the effects of climate change (i.e. efforts to encourage carpooling at schools).

Here are some of the Youth for a Cool Earth participants’ accomplishments:

• Training of 273 Youth for a Cool Earth peer leaders – Students at six sites brainstormed and prepared key messages and marketing materials and performed outreach and recruitment at schools, 83% of which were low-income or in marginalized communities. Students conducted youth trainings on environmental stewardship and leadership skills. At additional youth trainings, over 60% of attending students demonstrated increased environmental literacy and understanding.
• Influencing of behavior changes – Youth leaders monitored and coordinated peer-to-peer workshops and collected pre- and post-tests and evaluations indicating that 78% of those surveyed reported positive environmental behavior changes in their own lives.
• Water cleanup event – Students coordinated a water cleanup event (pictured below) where 1,000 pounds of refuse was collected at the Guadalupe River in May of 2019 by eight youth ambassadors along with their teacher.
• Peer-to-Peer Workshops – 37 youth participated in additional peer mentor activities in which peer leaders trained 188 additional youth.
• Adoption of water pollution/climate change policy – Youth 4 Lungs succeeded in getting a recycling policy passed for Milpitas High School’s biology classroom. (See some of Y4L’s social media posts below)

The goal of our Youth for a Cool Earth program is to encourage students to embrace environmental activism as their own personal duty. By instilling a sense of personal responsibility and environmental ethics into students, Breathe California hopes to ensure that our community is ready and able to fight climate change now and in the future.

To learn more about the Youth for Cool Earth program, please contact contact Jason Cross at jason@lungsrus.org or (408) 998-5865.