The third annual WNY Youth Climate Action Summit is in the books and it was a huge success. Thanks to all of our partners and sponsors who helped to bring together an incredible group of youth and mentors on June 1st to form vibrant community. All who participated left with energy, knowledge, networks and plans for what to do next, and actionable steps in place to make those plans move forward. We had 140 students study the science, art, humanity, locality, communities, means of production, agriculture, and social justice of climate change at Buffalo State College.
Climate change poses an existential threat to the well-being of societies and ecosystems around the world. While this can often seem overwhelming, individuals have the power to effect real change once they acquire the necessary leadership skills and knowledge. Delivering these attributes to a new generation of young leaders is the goal of this summit.
Over the course of our first two summits in June of 2017 and 2018 we brought together over 300 high school students from across 20+ WNY school districts to Buffalo State College to partake in a full day of climate change education and leadership training. The students were given an aspirational message to take with them into their communities and developed a plan to carry out actual significant change.
This year we built on those successes by bringing back many of our past attendees and highlighting their wins and losses to provide guidance for the new members of the summit. This was inspirational to the youth in attendance and gave the returnees a sense of leadership and ownership of the summit, as well as granting an aspirational tone to all those in attendance. All of this was be done in the stunning, new LEEDS certified Science and Math Center of Buffalo State College.
About
If you would like some more details about what we are about, or what the workshops entailed – we encourage you to take a close look at our program, downloadable below. Please explore the sponsors and partners page of this site for more information about the various organizations and individuals who helped make this event transpire.
- WNY Climate Youth Fellows
- Basics of Climate Change
- Wind turbine challenge
- Citizen Science
- Building a better solar panel
- Key Note speakers on Climate Change in WNY
- Advocacy training
- Team Action Planning
- Open-space brainstorming
- Keynote speakers
- Writing community-based action plans
- Transport to Miss Buffalo
- A Miss Buffalo harbor cruise to bond and network
As you can see, the opportunities for the youth of WNY to network, learn, and gain the tools needed to affect change are offered in abundance at this summit.
