Youth Engaging in the Science of Resilience: Sensing the Environment and Envisioning Solutions (YES Resilience: SEE Solutions) is a project supporting informal educators and youth in developing locally relevant solutions to climate impacts in their communities, fostering youth environmental health literacy (EHL) for climate resilience. EHL refers to the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that enable people to make health-protective decisions using available environmental data.
Youth Programs
Teen Climate Ambassadors
In partnership with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Teen Climate Ambassadors is a free, week-long summer STEM enrichment program that engages 9th-12th graders in hands-on activities using science and technology to explore local climate impacts and investigate strategies for increasing resilience.in their communities. Participants learn skills to make a difference and work to build stronger communities alongside professionals in environmental, health and climate fields. All participants are encouraged to lead an optional action project in their community during the school year.
The 2025 Teen Climate Ambassadors summer institute will take place daily from Monday, July 28 through Friday, August 1. More information and the online application are available here.
Juntos NC
In partnership with Juntos NC, students from participating counties will engage in summer and school-year programming that will enable youth to explore various aspects of climate resilience in their communities. They will participate in seasonal cohorts year-round that will be determined during the summer programming, Juntos Summer Academy. Students who participate will present during Academy and bring their knowledge to the county level by leading activities 2-3 times a semester in their Juntos 4-H Club and developing action projects.
Duwamish Valley Youth Corps
In partnership with the University of Washington EDGE Center and the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps (DVYC), DVYC members will participate in seasonal cohorts and follow-on programming that enable youth to explore various aspects of climate resilience in their communities and develop youth-led action projects to showcase at community events. They also will engage with new curriculum materials, developed in partnership with the University of Washington EDGE Center, with a focus on wildfire and air quality.
YES Resilience Pilot Project
From 2019-2022, the YES Resilience pilot project explored the extent to which cohorts of rural and urban youth participating in science center programming developed EHL for climate resilience. Check out the video below for more information.
Program Contact
Kati McArdle,
Senior Environmental Education Coordinator, Center for Public Engagement with Science
(919) 966-1339kmcardl@unc.edu
People
Made Possible by:
Funding Source
This program is made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program (Award #DRL-2215420).
(Principal Investigator: Kathleen Gray; Co-Principal Investigator: Sarah Yelton)
Collaborators
YES Resilience: SEE Solutions is conducted in partnership with two university research centers – the UNC Institute for the Environment (UNC-IE) and the University of Washington Interdisciplinary Center for Exposures, Disease, Genomics, and Environment (the EDGE Center) – and three community partners – the NC Museum of Natural Science, the Juntos NC Program, and the Duwamish River Community Coalition (DRCC) in Washington State.
