Image of Climate Youth Ambassadors

The fourth cohort of Youth Climate Ambassadors (YCA) held an in-person retreat at the College of San Mateo on Saturday, December 10 to mark the program’s midpoint. At the retreat, students participated in community building activities, heard from a YCA alumni panel, and presented their months-long research projects. 

Since the YCA program began in October, participants have been collaborating in small groups, diving deeply into one of the following focus areas: energy, food, water, waste, land-based ecosystems, or transportation. In each research group, students created a story that highlighted the key causes of the situation and its impact on the environment. Students gathered data and evidence to support their findings, created diagrams to visualize relationships between different variables, and identified leverage points for change to brainstorm solutions.

At the retreat, students shared the results of these projects and analyzed how the subject of their research overlapped with the other groups.

The second half of the YCA program, running from January through May, focuses on the “action” phase of solutionary design: YCA ambassadors will design and implement a project that improves the environmental sustainability of their school or local community. Students will present their community impact projects at a capstone event to mark the YCA program’s completion in May 2023.

In anticipation of this second semester work the students heard from YCA alumni who shared best practices and advice for completing the community impact project. Students said that hearing from previous YCA ambassadors was a highlight of the day.

Gratitude TreeIn the afternoon students met one last time with their research groups to brainstorm solutions at the local level to mitigate or reduce the impacts of environmental problems in their communities. In addition, to express their appreciation to group members for their collaboration and support over the past three months, students added messages of thanks to a gratitude tree.

We are optimistic about our environmental future with these amazing students onboard!

The YCA Leadership Program is a shared program of the San Mateo County Office of Education, the County of San Mateo’s Office of Sustainability, Citizens Environmental Council of Burlingame, Acterra, and funding partner, Peninsula Clean Energy.

To learn more, please see SMCOE's Environmental Literacy and Sustainability Initiative webpage or email ELSI@smcoe.org.

Posted December 13, 2022.