ABSTRACT
Addressing youth climate literacy is a pressing issue in the United States. The Wild Center’s Adirondack Youth Climate Summits were developed to address the climate literacy gap in formal educational programs on climate change. A Youth Climate Summit is a one- to two-day event that convenes youth ages 14–21 years old to participate in workshops, hands-on activities, poster sessions, and networking to learn about climate change science, impacts, and solutions. Students at our climate summits are exposed to a diversity of solutions that can feasibly be implemented within their own homes, schools, and communities. The Wild Center has collaborated with over 50 different informal science institutions, NGOs, K-12 schools (public and private), universities and colleges, government agencies, local and municipal governments, and communities to initiate Youth Climate Summits across the United States and around the world. In this chapter we detail how we structure Youth Climate Summits for impact at scale and how you may use our model in your own community.
