Vision

Creating a bottom-up approach is the basis of an accessible, dynamic, contextual, ever-evolving, educational platform for teaching topics related to climate change. With the input of young people who are currently enrolled in high school and university and concerned about climate change, alongside our network of climate researchers to ensure scientific rigor, we will create an educational didactic toolkit that reflects the interests of youth on climate science. In addition, the current and future local status of climate will be addressed.

Metrics for success  

We used the following metrics to measure the impact of our project throughout the six months of the Forum:

• Questionnaires to target group’s perception and interest in climate change
• Number of survey responses
• Number of Mexican states with representative samples reached with the survey
• Preliminary report on the analysis of the survey results
• Didactic tools prototype
• Prototype test with focus groups
• Number of participants at each event
• Lessons-learned handbook

Final report 

The Climate A-dventure project faced two main challenges: 1) Due to the differing professional paths of some team members, they could not continue collaborating, and 2) Due to the team restructuring, we had to reconsider and adapt the scope of the project.  

Thankfully, we found new members ready to fill the vacancies and reactivate the project. But due to this, we had to restructure our goals, timeline, and scope of the project. Because of this we were only able to achieve the first half of our metrics of success. However, we were still able redirect our efforts towards different but substantial goals and to achieve results. One of the main accomplishments was the reach of the survey: we obtained 277 responses from all over the country. We decided to focus our analysis on the state of Guerrero (160 responses) )and the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico (ZMVM) (66 responses), where we had the most significant reach. The preliminary analysis of our results showed us that respondents in Guerrero and the ZMVM share the perception that the solution for climate lies within energy, transportation, and consumerism. A second interesting finding was that social media and the internet are the primary mediums that educate people about climate issues. In contrast, formal education is not the primary way our surveyees have learned. From that preliminary analysis and by recommendation of our mentor, we decided to deepen and refine our analysis of the results to write a series of academic papers.  

The next steps of our project will be to complete an in-depth analysis of the results and create and test the didactic tools prototypes.  

Vision

The aim of ECommunity was to get people interested in ecological, biological, and environmental information. Our idea was to share what we are learning while studying biology with a general audience. To do this, we decided to connect with end-users mainly through Instagram and Facebook.

Metrics for success  

From our mentor, we discovered that if we wanted to share knowledge, we must share it in a way that is accessible to anyone – no matter the age or social condition. Based on this, we decided to change our objective to the dissemination of integral scientific information. We identified an elementary school that was willing work with us as we tested our ideas for communicating through social media posts.

Final report 

Ecommunity was created by three young and passionate undergrad Biology students. Our idea was to become a source of scientific information, not only for students and scientists but also for everyone in our community. Since last September, we have posted in our Instagram account a total of 12 short infographics about pesticides, the importance of plants and their general morphology, the elaboration of compost, GMOs, and about some of our favorite animals. After that, with the assistance of Dr. Alejandra Chong, we started our Wix website. Finally, we searched for schools that would allow us to share information about climate change, the actions in which they could be involved, and the importance of constantly refreshing knowledge and respect for Mother Nature. The Instituto Coyoacán del Sur offered the chance to give hold meetings twice a month, for which we are very grateful because it is an excellent opportunity to share our knowledge and change the perceptions the children have of climate change and biology.

Vision

Our project will educate and inspire younger generations. The best way to have a long-term sustainable impact is through future generations. Organizing presentations in schools about topics related to climate change will give them tools and information that children will not only be able to use, but that they can take home to their families, to adapt and adopt climate-friendly behaviors.

Metrics for success  

Initially, we wanted to develop our own school program with presentations for the children. To start, we contacted organizations that already had programs, as the COVID-19 situation made it more challenging to make new plans for the schools. We were able to offer our knowledge and participate in the implementation of the Impact Day, where we educated children and young adults about the importance and implications of biodiversity. More projects and interactions will follow.

Final report 

We were able to implement a project with children and young adults as planned. We did it in cooperation with an organization that coordinated with schools, as they already had synergies and contacts. We were able to use these contacts to implement our primary goal of educating younger generations. COVID-19 made it more difficult to find partners and schools that would plan in advance, as schools were closed for a while. We plan to continue organizing events as volunteers and further offering our knowledge for the development of educational programs as schools return to in-person learning.

Vision

The main question is how to best educate the youngest generation on climate change as we struggle to balancing fear and hope. We want pupils to feel curious and capable. Therefore, we want to work closely with teachers to create a new teaching style where climate change is translated and integrated into every school subject. The bigger Vision is to connect teachers worldwide with available knowledge and information about climate change and related challenges. 

Metrics for success  

• Surveys before and after class assessing the perception of climate change 
• Number of integrated classes 
• Number of pupils taught 
• Teacher surveys 
• Number of participating schools  
• Measurement of pupils’ feelings before and after a class (e.g., fear, numbness, overwhelm, curiosity, interest, informed, etc.).

Final report 

During the project, we realized that sustainable and comprehensive implementation of such a project could not be achieved within six months. There are many possible ways to start and conduct such a project and many factors that need to be considered. An example of a complication is that we wanted to interview teachers from every subject in specific schools, but the COVID-19 pandemic made this difficult.  

We collected all ideas in a report to show some of the different activities that could be undertaken to tackle this topic with a system-thinking approach. The goal is to achieve broader interconnected system change through the involvement of various stakeholders and the extension of climate education itself. We have looked into Copenhagen and Vienna as pilot projects.  

Status:

• Copenhagen Ecosystem assessed
• Vienna School System Explanation done + best practice example (Montessori school). 
• No comparison because too different schooling systems and no indicators for comparison YET, two teacher interviews done in each city.
• Curriculum ideas –> not approved
• Teacher survey created –> ready to send out

We can now gather and validate teacher information can and use that to create materials. It is not clear whether implementation will be through online schooling material or direct in-school projects. However, we believe that cities like Copenhagen and Vienna could serve as successful examples for future project implementation around the world and sharing best practices will foster the reinforcement of existing networks and platforms and the creation of new ones.

Vision

To change the perception and attitudes of children towards environmental issues through workshops designed to help them understand essential environmental and ecological concepts and their role in caring for them.

Metrics for success  

We will track the activities developed during the workshop by issuing a questionnaire at the end of each activity. This will help us to evaluate how well the students retain the knowledge and whether their environmental awareness shifts. To achieve these project objectives, the entirety of the project activities in San Cristobal de la Barranca will align with Objective 13 from the Sustainable Development Goals and tasks.13. and 13.b. 

Final report 

We could not deliver all the workshops we had planned because of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, we considered online workshops, but that was not possible because the community does not have the technological resources needed for that (enough devices and internet). However, we did have the opportunity to implement a workshop about trees and their importance to a group of seven children in May of 2021. This was a wonderful experience for both the children and us. We are looking forward to continuing with our project beyond the forum because we believe that it will positively impact the community of San Cristobal de la Barranca.

Vision

In the long run, the participating youth will become more open-minded and empathetic towards the consequences of global challenges while understanding the usefulness of non-institutionalized avenues for addressing climate change. We hope learners can apply and think of climate change as something that penetrates down to each individual’s life. Ideally, the network would grow to accommodate and tackle constantly changing environmental demands as a universal concern! 

Metrics for success  

• A completed event = Gloria’s Global Game Night with 9 participants. 
• Number of clicks, likes, or impressions = average of 100 clicks and 30 likes per posts with 40 posts in total on Instagram, most liked post with 86 likes. 
• Number of members = 133 followers and 196 accounts reached on Instagram, 39 page likes on Facebook.  
• Survey results / Feedback from audience which expressed high satisfaction for the event we held.  

Final report 

Through the use of social media, we honed our analytical skills by examining which style and content are popular to ensure continuous audience engagement. Also, since we each took on different roles to complete the weekly Instagram/Facebook posts, we learned how essential it is to communicate with each other, even for minor tasks.   

In April we conducted “Gloria’s Global Game Night,” which provided us a chance for us to interact personally – although still virtually – with our audiences. At the outset we struggled with advertising the event because we have few active followers and because April is either the end or the start of school in different regions. Initially, the objective of the night was to “challenge the participants (to) bring the issues of the climate crisis (in)to (their) real lives,” which was the fundamental purpose of Gloria. However, we quickly learned how difficult it is to execute all activities – introduction, short discussion(s), and games – according to the planned schedule. Unfortunately, with time restrictions and our desire to keep the game night a fun experience for everyone, we had to sacrifice the discussion portion. Even so, we managed to continuously incorporate “environmental” and “sustainable” aspects throughout the night to keep the project aligned with our purpose.   

Overall, the skills in leadership, teamwork, organization, and communication acquired through Gloria will undoubtedly aid us to work even more effectively for the better of the world.   

Vision

Our goal is to educate people on climate change and inspire them to act. We plan to achieve that by creating a climate-related board game that will draw attention to scientific facts in a way that is easy to grasp. Our project targets people aged 6+ who are into board games. Scientific data veiled by game format should bring attention to climate change without disbelief or rejection and raise awareness. 

Metrics for success  

A successful outcome for us would include growth in awareness about climate change, a healthier attitude towards it, and a new climate-related board game, the income from which would go to environmental charities.  

The baseline outcome of our project is having a new educational climate-related game. We will measure success by the game’s popularity and its educational value, judging by the feedback from players collected on the game’s website (part of an ad campaign) and the number of sales. 

Final report 

Developing a board game about climate change appeared to be a sophisticated process as our main goal was to keep players interested while giving them factual information on climate. The chosen concept of the game meets this requirement. It is a card game that offers players ways to solve global and regional problems related to climate change, with each player developing the characteristics for a particular country. The goal is to solve as many problems as possible by expanding the range of the country’s economic, political, and social opportunities. There can be more than one winner as we wanted to emphasize that problems caused by climate change must be solved collaboratively.  

Through the game, we communicate information through fun historical or scientific facts in a way that is not overwhelming for younger players but is still informative for older participants. One of the most exciting parts of the game is that players invest in different climate change solutions, resulting in economic growth or decline, and resembles real-life uncertainty resulting from the action.    

Initially, we planned to develop a physical copy of the game to sell and give profit to charity. As we progressed, we decided that the game should be available for free, so we made it open-access. The link to download all the materials for the game and more information can be found on our Instagram:   world_climate_challenge

Vision

We aim to publish high-quality articles and papers that will provide information and enhance readers’ problem-solving and decision-making skills. Our publication equips students and faculty with the tools, knowledge, and motivation to adopt sustainable behavior changes. Moreover, we will inspire students across all disciplines to contribute to innovative solutions to climate change. Finally, we will promote diversity of identity and voice in climate activism. 

Metrics for success  

One metric of success is tracking the quality and quantity of articles, papers, and content produced. Our publication has already gained 1,000+ views, and we will continue to track views and impressions from our website and online semesterly issues. We will continue to track our online engagement through our social media platforms. We will circulate reader feedback surveys on how we can improve as a publication. Perennial has grown to a team of 37 students and will expand in the upcoming year. 

Final report 

As UC Berkeley’s undergraduate environmental journal, Perennial transforms students’ perceptions of how they can contribute to environmental action in their fields. Through long-form journalistic pieces and research papers, we educate our peers on the climate crisis, encourage student action, and cultivate a new generation of climate advocates. In January 2021, Perennial published Issue 2 with the theme “Transformation,” featuring 14 articles and research papers on environmental topics, which ranged from the impacts of the California wildfires to what a just transition to a clean energy future looks like.   

While it was difficult for our team to coordinate and work together online, we engaged our readership base, garnering over 4,000 impressions and 1,500 reads on our Issuu platform alone. We also promoted and circulated our content on our social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In addition, we facilitated an environmental journalism course and trained student writers to communicate on environmental topics effectively. These students’ work is featured in our issues and on our website.  

Throughout this experience, we expanded our mission to build influence beyond Berkeley. We have collected research submissions from students globally for our third issue, “Momentum,” slated for publication in June 2021. In the future, we hope to further diversify our content by relaunching our website and creating more social media content. In addition, we plan to facilitate another environmental journalism course to continue creating educational environmental content and build a global network of student environmental journals. 

Vision

Social participation is a crucial element for successful climate policies. Our project aims to strengthen the institutional capacities of the Climate Change Council (C3), which is the institutional mechanism designed to promote the integration and participation of social actors in Mexican climate policy. In particular, we plan to explore ways to amend the C3 to empower indigenous peoples in the national climate governance. 

Metrics for success  

The Metrics for Success are mainly based on measuring the scope of our Facebook page (considering that it is the most used social media platform in Mexico). We estimate that the page will have at least 1,000 followers, at least 25% of which will be from indigenous communities. We will develop five multimedia posts every month, including infographics, microcapsules, and thematic dialogues with climate activists from Mexico’s indigenous communities. All the material will be released with captions in Spanish-English. 

Final report 

We achieved the following results: (a) a Podcast on Spotify called “Pulques contra el Cambio Climático,” where we interviewed indigenous climate activists from Mexico. To date, we have broadcast six one-hour episodes and reached 234 reproductions. (b) A strong social media presence: On Facebook we got 1,362 likes and reached more than 5,000 people through thematic dialogues, infographics, memes, etc. on topics such as climate governance and climate justice. On Twitter, we have 500 followers and up to 81,821 impressions. On Instagram, we managed to have 317 followers and had reached up to 5,549 people. (c) Linkage with institutions and organizations:  We participated in two programs through the Embassy of the United Kingdom. The first was the “Ambassador for a Day” program, which our team member, Violeta participated in, and the second was “Hacking the climate crisis: the future is indigenous.” We also connected with the “Yo Protejo El Humedal” community movement. (d) A final report called “Analysis and proposal of the participation of indigenous peoples in the Council on Climate Change (C3)” in which we present a literature review on climate governance and climate justice, an analysis of national legislation on climate change and a diagnosis of C3, as well as a series of recommendations for its amendment.

Vision

The project looks forward to creating awareness and lobbying for policy implementation of gender-inclusive approaches in addressing climate crisis mitigation through students’ climate change activism campaigns. 

Metrics for success  

We will measure success when: 

At least 200 young professionals are trained on gender roles in regards to addressing climate change. 

One thousand five hundred seedlings of fruit trees and indigenous tree species are planted. 

Awareness about climate change is raised, and people mobilized through viral social media campaigns on Twitter, Campus bee, Campus face, Facebook, and Instagram.  

We hold at least one news broadcast and a guild gender and climate change summit. 

Final report 

This was the first climate awareness campaign to be organized at Makerere University Business School since its inception in 1997. The project architects organized activities to mobilize and raise awareness about climate change through viral social media campaigns on Twitter, Campus bee, Campus face, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn news, and the Climate Change Summit. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 lockdown of schools and restrictions on interdistrict travel, we could not follow through on our proposed project activity raising community sensitivity through tree planting.

Nonetheless, the project’s primary objective was attained through the Climate Change Awareness Summit that we successfully carried out. The summit attracted diverse participants from academia, government agencies, international agencies, NGOs, students, researchers, and members of the general public worldwide. The theme of the summit was cultivating gender-responsive approaches to avert the climate change crisis. The summit was an activity of a student-led project named “Girl Hand Him a Tree or Plant It.”   

The event attracted experts as keynote speakers, panelists, and participants. Among the panelists were Prof. Muyiwa Adaramola, Ph.D., Norwegian University of Life Science; Prof. Gill Gita, Ph.D., Northumbria University-UK; and Stewart, the director of Plantations NFA; Dr. Okurut Tom, Executive Director of NEMA; Dr. Elizabeth Bwanga, Ph.D., Makerere University; Lead Economist at the Office of the Prime Minister; and Prof. Olvar Bergland, Norwegian University of Life Science.  

The two-day event was officially opened by the principal MUBS Prof. Wasswa Balunywa and the Norad representative to Uganda. Over the course of two days, over 250 people joined the summit sessions. Thanks to Iain Patton, CEO, EAUC – The Sustainable Leadership Alliance for Education, for his mentorship to the students that made this a historic event.  

Highlights of the Summit  

• Through the summit, the university community has appreciated the reality of climate change.  
• We were able to enroll over 80 students in climate change mitigation campaigns.  
• The subject matter attracted potential partners from both local and international organizations.  
• The University administration has committed to supporting and prioritizing climate change mitigation and adaptation research and innovations undertakings, particularly FEEMS.  
• We launched a student association to run actionable climate projects and research activities during the summit. The association will be housed in the Management Science Department.  
• Over 250 participants attended the summit, and more than half are willing to participate in more of such activities. In addition, those already involved are ready to participate in activities aimed at averting climate change crises.  

Way forward 

• We intend to scale engagement with national school-wide campaigns to create awareness to start a community of ambassadors and climate activists.  
• We are committed to continuing with climate change activism through environmental degradation tracking, stakeholders’ meetings, and documenting events.   
• We will continue to use social media to create awareness about climate change mitigation and adaptation.  
• We are continuously seeking out partnerships with like-minded people and organizations to support our youth-led climate change activism to tap into the vast age group (Matchbox generation).  

Challenges  

• The unprecedented lockdown of schools and the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic made it hard for us to implement activities as planned.  
• Lack of access to resources to facilitate climate change campaigns almost rendered the project inexecutable.   
• Lack of community role models to nurture and support initiatives of young people to ensure scalability of such ideas. 

Vision

We hope to create a comprehensive research report that outlines specific recommendations for UC Berkeley’s Sustainability Report to adopt an environmental justice mindset at the end of our project. We will present this to key stakeholders, namely the Chief Sustainability Officer, to hear feedback on our proposals. In addition, we hope to influence key decision-makers to think more critically about environmental justice in their efforts and adopt some of our recommendations into the sustainability report. 

Metrics for success  

We will measure success by the thoroughness of our research project, exploring all five areas of the report, and identifying specific environmental justice recommendations. We plan on collecting feedback from key stakeholders, which will indicate both the thoroughness and feasibility of our plan. Our project will be put on the Office of Sustainability website, where we hope to garner 500+ views to increase awareness about environmental justice and change the mindset of our community. 

Final report 

The purpose of this project is to incorporate environmental justice into UC Berkeley’s Campus Sustainability Plan. As a research team, we created detailed recommendations for UC Berkeley’s Office of Sustainability on how they can utilize UC Berkeley’s institutional power for environmental justice.   

To ensure that we were well-informed about the current sustainability report, we conducted interviews with the Chief Sustainability Officer and a literature review of the report. We identified two main sections from this analysis to focus our recommendations on and hoped to center our analysis on community-driven solutions. First, to research how UC Berkeley can better center environmental justice, our research team interviewed 10+ sustainability managers at universities and learned about their environmental initiatives. We discovered that many universities had a distinct definition of environmental justice and were beginning to work on long-term environmental-social initiatives.    

Based on our various research sources, including personal accounts, interviews with universities, other campus resources, and online research, we wrote recommendations to center the report on environmental justice. We also included the relevant UN SDGs, campus partners, and different stakeholder sections for each recommendation. Finally, we ensured that all of our recommendations were peer-reviewed and research-driven, consulted feedback from various mentors, and organized into a clean, visually appealing document.  

The following steps of our project include writing recommendations for the remaining sections of the sustainability report and implementing our ideas.  

For more information, please see the following reports:

• Culture and learning
• Health and sustainability 

• Incorporating Environmental Justice into UC Berkeley’s Sustainability Plan

Vision

GreenCheck supports community-led climate action groups from MAPA (Most Affected Peoples and Areas), starting with Latin America and Southeast Asia. We provide funding, network creation, and capacity building. We subvert and dismantle existing colonial philanthropy infrastructures by facilitating easy and informed access to critical resources for grassroots communities engaged in climate action and justice activities in a regenerative and non-hierarchical way. 

Metrics for success  

We will look at the number of donors, the amount of funds collected from these donors, and the number of partner groups as our baseline. To measure our platform’s performance over time, we will use our website’s traffic indicators (new visitors, bounce rate, page views, time spent on-site) and to our partner groups via our site. We will also measure post-donation impacts by looking at the number of partner groups’ goals we have helped achieve, using donations collected on our platform. 

Final report 

To establish GreenCheck as a decolonial philanthropic organization, we had to understand the contexts we want to work in, the needs of the communities we want to support, and where we fit into the broader climate action movement. For that reason, we reached out to more than 100 contacts and had conversations with 30+ climate action organizations across the Global South. We did this to develop a platform that would support these organizations in the ways they needed. As a result, we found ourselves building an incredible network that will come together through our GreenCheck Communities platform, serving as a mutual aid network, supporting our partners and any other individuals or organizations that want to contribute. Many of our contacts embraced our mission as something they wanted and needed while also offering feedback necessary to tailor our organization to their needs.  

While we had initially planned to fully launch our donation and networking platform by May 2021, we realized that this runway was far too short. Therefore, since October 2020 and as of May 2021, we have started securing fiscal sponsorship, building a website, confirmed four partner organizations from Singapore, Malaysia, Colombia, and Guatemala, and made a network of 100+ climate-conscious people. Internally, we expanded our team three-fold as colleagues and friends reached out eager to contribute to our mission. We plan to keep growing our team over the summer and set a launch date soon. 

Vision

Educating young minds about climate change and how they are can ensure a sustainable planet is key to saving the environment for the present generation and those to come.  Our vision is to create an educational toolkit with solution-oriented resources to empower children and foster awareness, creativity, and effectiveness. Everyone should be sensitized to climate change and how protecting and appreciating our interconnection with nature, and we are mobilizing people on social media for this purpose. 

Metrics for success  

We assessed the students to test their knowledge of understanding after the end of the program. We prepared survey questions to test how well they understood the concept “climate change and its detrimental effects.” We also evaluated how well teachers understood climate change and other related environmental issues. We took a note of how the school handled the environment and inquired about how new knowledge could be used to improve the situation. 

Final report 

Our project went well. We were able to accomplish what we envisaged even though we had a few setbacks due to the coronavirus pandemic. Our plan was to visit different schools but because of COVID-19 restrictions we limited the program to just one school. This limited to the number of students we were able to connect with. It  

One huge lesson the outreach program taught us is that children are ready to learn and ready to take actions. They only need to be well informed about the impacts they would be making with their actions and inactions.  

The only goal we decided to discontinue was mobilizing people through social media platforms. 

Vision

We consider ecological education an excellent tool for empowering people to make personal and societal changes that benefit the environment. Our idea is to provide expert information in an educational, approachable, and encouraging way. How often do people get to ask worrisome questions to experts in the field of ecology? Only sometimes, moreover, only a few people have the time to read long interviews. A podcast is a great way to learn without having to digress! Interviews with ecologists, owners of eco-businesses, activists, and eco-volunteers will inspire people who want to understand ecology even if they are busy.

Metrics for success  

Our main goal is to raise awareness about ecology in society and inspire people to take action that will benefit the environment. The successful outcome includes the finished and published podcast that is easily accessible to our key audience, which consists of people aged 18-35, who are the main podcast listeners, according to statistics. We have achieved this goal by recording four episodes of the podcast

Final report 

During the Forum, we accomplished our goal of creating an educational podcast, “Ecologia.” We have been working closely with our community to choose the most interesting topics of discussion and the most proficient experts in the field. The chosen topics were environmental psychology, the history of ecology, sustainable development, and the applicability of ecological practices in business. It was an engaging process to take interviews because it revealed a variety of things we previously had not known about ecology. We hope our podcast will get to its listeners and catch their attention! We are working on the last editing touches and will soon upload our podcast on YouTube. In addition, we want to continue working on the project and create new topics for the podcast.

Vision

This project aims to platform voices of individuals who will experience differentiated impacts of the climate crisis in a non-technical, heterogeneous way. As a crisis that can only be overcome through collective action and systems change, it is principal to include real experiences and thoughts of ordinary individuals. Inspiring people to share their voice and vision of an alternative future using various mediums will enable them to voice their hopes for the future. It will re-center the opinions and ideas of those on the ground and alter the climate conversation to include real experiences and thoughts of ordinary individuals.

Metrics for success  

Our primary metric of success was the anthology itself, which will be published shortly. We also have concrete plans for it to be present at COP27. We are especially pleased by this as – with the project being only six months old and the conference taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt – we were uncertain whether we would have the capacity for it to be present at the negotiations. As for social media outcomes, we are pleased to have gained the following: (at the time of writing this end-of-forum report)

• Instagram: 180 followers
• Facebook: 86 followers
• LinkedIn: 559 followers

Further metrics centering on website reach can be found in our final report below.

Final report 

With submissions now closed, we are currently putting together the anthology. All being well, we should be sending it to be printed in the coming days. Once printed, we will have a physical representation of our work for the past six months.

We have been impressed with our reach. Our website, for instance, was viewed in 55 different countries! While our coverage was focused in the UK (as we anticipated it might be because of our networks), we are happy to have received submissions from a variety of countries, including the USA, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Israel.

Our main barrier, as we can imagine other projects had also to face, was balancing the project with our academic studies. At the start of the project, two team members (Hannah and Leoni) were just a few months away from graduating with their bachelor’s degrees; they had several deadlines and responsibilities away from Write for Earth that they had to meet. Equally, Matthew was approaching the end of his second year of undergraduate study and negotiating Write for Earth with end-of-year exams and preparations for his final year.

We’ve found that negotiating deadlines tends to characterize a lot of youth work on climate, and all three of us had been doing this previously with other groups that we were a part of. So while it did perhaps limit the amount of outreach we could do, we did not let our responsibility interfere with our academic studies, which we are pleased with!

We were happy to connect with Felicity from Arctic Angels. Hannah and Felicity had previously volunteered together with a different climate non-profit, so it was especially nice to see them work together again here. In a similar vein, we enjoyed connecting with Max from The Greenzine and eventually partnering with them. With Max living in the US, the insights and networks he shared with us were especially useful, with our own networks being predominately in Europe.

Throughout the project, we always considered the possibility of getting the anthology to COP27 in Egypt. We briefly discussed potential opportunities to do so: perhaps using our connections from climate organizations we have been in to take it to Egypt on our behalf. However, one of our team members, Hannah, was selected to be on the UK’s youth delegation to COP27, and so, she can go to COP27 and observe negotiations happening in the Blue Zone. She will also be able to bring the anthology with her and discuss our work with the decision-makers and world leaders she meets in Egypt.

Something that this project has reaffirmed to us is how the climate movement can, at times, resemble an echo chamber: we communicate with ‘the choir’ the most; it can be challenging to break out of the ‘bubble’ of climate activism. Additionally, many people within the movement experience imposter syndrome. While this has been experienced by the three of us as individuals, in response to a question we asked in our equality and diversity monitoring form, we received an answer that one of our authors did not identify with the term ‘climate activist’ because they “hadn’t done enough.” Questions are raised here: Why do we feel like we must quantify our actions to gain validity? Indeed, what is ‘enough’? We believe both these things may have impacted the number of submissions we received and where we received submissions from.

Going forward, we are currently considering repeating the project to create a second anthology. However, this time the time that submissions will be open for will be longer. By making this change, we hope to have more time to do outreach and to give our authors more time to write their submissions. We will also continue to consider how to approach submissions in different languages and work more with our outreach team.

Overall, we are pleased with the progress of Write for Earth! We are especially happy that the three of us had another opportunity to work together on achieving a concrete goal. Many thanks to the Global University Climate Forum for facilitating this.