Below are the notes from our Open Space session about Connecting Youth Initiatives at the NE Climate Collaborative Summit. We had a great group of representatives mostly from high schools in New Hampshire. I believe Walker offered to help coordinate a Zoom call this summer in June or July where we can flesh out a plan for the next school year. Excited to see where this idea goes and help support the creation of this regional coalition!

Open Space Session: Connecting Youth Initiatives Notes

Who is in the room:

• Cassidy + Anna - cobrown Northwood Academy in Northwood, NH

• Autumn + Max- Pinkerton Academy in NH

• Lucy- freshman Hopkinton High School

• Olivia- work in Maine & started Maine Environmental Change Network (15-30)

• Hannah- The Wild Center

Initial Thoughts:

• How to move from action role to mentoring role, becoming the model for others

• The younger you can get someone invested, the better

What is the action/ what do we want to do?

• try to understand what is going on in the youth climate movement in Maine- research project, youth advisory team from youth led action groups in the state

• there is very little understanding/ mapping of the youth climate movement in our region

• there are lots of big things happening but we are not very networked across the region

• we need to tell the story of our movement- could we create a board to try and get all these different initiatives and clubs, how they achieved success, seek advice?

• NHEEP + VTEEP should more officially join their efforts

How do we connect/ communicate with each other?

• mapping- who are the players: Hopkinton Environmental Club (10-15 members), NH Energy Education Project (NHEEP) + Vermont Energy Education Project (VEEP), Maine Environmental Changemakers Network, Maine Youth for Climate Justice, 350 NH, Oyster River, High School Environmental Clubs across NY, ME, NH & VT, ClimaTeens at The Wild Center

• add youth coalition to the NE Climate Change Collaborative—> it can be called the Northeast Youth Climate Coalition or Society; green teams/ environmental clubs can be chapters or affiliates of the coalition

• regular meet ups for green teams, trying to get more schools involved

• shared google folder- documents sorted by months

• need a few volunteers to coordinate the regular highlights

• in person regional conversation to decide what this group might be

• meeting again sometime in June/ July on Zoom

• need funding to bring youth, to pay youth for an advisory board for their time- can NE Climate Education Collaborative help with this?

Action steps:

• get connected via e-mail

• regular meet ups: every 2ish months OR regular newsletter- project bright spots each month, sharing what each club has been up to

• create a youth-centered part of the NE Climate Change Education Summit next year, meet up at Adirondack Youth Climate Summit, or other regional event

In Action,

Hannah

So what can we do?

Here are two action steps.

#1- Look for and highlight models where something similar (or parts of this) are already succeeding.

Know a school or class who is trying this? Share widely. Start to show teachers and districts and communities what is possible. We cannot institute what we cannot imagine. With that in mind, here is one example in the Boston Globe about a class from Gorham, NH. This is an example of a community that has started looking to the students (and their teacher, Shannon Wydra), to solve community issues. VEEP/NHEEP is also hosting our Summer Institute for educators looking to make this shift in their class or organization. Drew has another opportunity for real estate and construction folks to start to think similarly.

#2- Host community building events and visioning/problem solving sessions in school buildings themselves. Actually physically center your community within the schools. We are hoping to work on a template for folks to adopt or build upon relating to "how to host a community building event at your local school." (From Aubrey Nelson)

Who (Bold names – part of small working group)

Megan Camp (Shelburne Farms)

Jen Kretser (Wild Center)

Ina Smith Johnson (Johnson Foundation)

Natalee Wrege (Paul Smith Vic)

Phoebe Hartvigsen (Squam Lakes Nature Center)

John (Earth to Sky Program – NASA Goddard)

Ali Jackson (Sciencenter, National Informal STEM Network)

Billy Spitzer (Hitchcock Center for ____ & Several National Collaboratives & Training programs)

Sophia (Vermont / NH Energy Program)

Leigh Ann Reynolds (NHEE)

Jen Serilo (Shelburne farms)

Josh Teeter (New York state parks)

Liz Soper

Joan Haley

Why Interested in this group

- Systems Thinking

- Thrive off Collaboration à efficiency

- How we can make work more actionable

- Power of local adaptation and customization and leveraging larger networks

- Being a part of national networks, lessons learned

- Successful networks are intentional

- Everyone doing separate advertising to similar school audiences … better way

- EE orgs/data collectors à national database in the works (leigh ann) current survey out, you can overlay layers (environmental justice etc). ME has its own version

- Can we get national notice, doing 1 action at same time across 5 states

- Food, climate, sustainability

- Power of collective

- Running out of time – need to go/do big

- Collaboration vs competition

Action Steps

- Who isn’t here who is doing work in this arena

o Major science museums (follow up à how might this impact smaller institutions being at the table? How might that shift the conversation?)

o Politicians

- Broad enough to up our impact skills but can be locally customizable vs lets all do the same curriculum (underlaying skills)

o IE: Set of professional skills/educational skills etc (how do we talk about climate change)

- Need to be able to measure impact (specific enough to do so)

- How do we organize as a group?

o Helpful to have paid staff to facilitate & a governance structure (leadership) /membership structure (commitment)

Questions

- Are we thinking of educating public or children?

o Constellations of different community groups connected to one another (nested systems) All doing their part. Everyone feels too broad a scope, but elementary for example is too narrow.

§ mitigation/adaptation work

§ education

§ Voting

§ Healthcare

§ Youth groups

§ We are an audience too (professionals)

- How are we motivating different groups of people

- What are the levers we can pull? What opportunities does that provide? What can we do together that we can’t do apart?

-

- What are the skills that we can benefit from that we can learn during these in person days together.

o Climate educator institute/set of programs

- Power Mapping (look at asset mapping) – who is missing, where is the power,

o Politicians

o Federal Organizations

- Resource Mapping – funding to support all this work

- Should we part of another/bigger collective action project that already exists?

o what other groups are doing similar things that we can merge.

o John – have a federally funded network, with a regional model (20 years running)

o Difference between network and collective impact

- Organization or Individuals?

o Underlaying Principle Suggestion: organizational change and when we come together thinking of repping their organization as part of the collaborative thinking about the good of the group not their organization

What are some of the things you’ve seen that worked

- Having real clarity around the change you want to make/goal

o Systems map is one way to do that– what are the levers (given constraints of time and resources – arrange resources around the change we want to make)

o Go slow to go Fast – Clarity first

- Shared Leadership and Commitment

o shared backbone, shifts culture of the group

o Not just a group of non-profits but a partnership with funders too at the table from the very beginning (away from scarcity mindset to abundance)

What Steps is this Group Committed to Taking

First Steps

- Small group coming together to get clear on the goal

o Achievable & Measurable

o Who is Funder and what are their needs/objectives?

- Connect with Other Groups

o Jen Reports back to NOAA about this conversation (bring back learning)

§ Bringing in Megan & Joan

o Billy Spitzer - meeting with Piscies Foundation & NOAA next week to talk to another group doing similar work.

- Google Doc to list out cross pollination opportunities to other networks (Ali Jackson will create)

Secondary Steps

- System Mapping (Hire someone to do a survey)

o What are we mapping, what is the goal?

o Ina – Midwest 7 state energy group example: How do we get rid of coal fired power plants in these states. Governors & Orgs got on board, lever was folks in power and having a clear specific goal.

- Network Analysis to map connections

- Bringing Funders into Conversation

Here are the notes from our "Accessibility & Relevance for Underserved Audiences" Open Space Discussion.

For the Open Space, I proposed a session based around a challenge myself, and other informal educators, face when working with underserved communities - specifically, rural communities with lower socio-economic status. During my first year as an informal educator, I've found it difficult to connect with students from these communities about issues such as climate change...or really anything related to STEM. I believe this is mostly due to these students having more domestic and substantial community trauma that challenge them daily.

During the Open Space, I received some excellent advice and resources for handling topics such as climate change in underserved communities. Please see our notes for more details!

Thank you again to everyone who joined our session! I appreciated it IMMENSELY!