Are your students starting to investigate their community? Let's change from problem-solving to problem-finding! The Earth Force Program Team gives a quick overview of this effective twist on tackling community issues!

Show notes:

Click here to read our CEO Vince Meldrum's blog post "The Importance of Problem-Finding in Climate Change Education."

Click here to download the Earth Force Quickstart for Educators!

Today we are excited to share an interview our Program Manager Taylor Ruffin did with young changemakers from Estes Park, Colorado. These young people are part of a multi-year effort at their school to build resilience to natural hazards in their community, and we can’t wait for you to hear their story. Enjoy!

More about the students’ work:

After years of evacuations due to more wildfires, Estes Park Middle School Resilience Team built upon their work last year to engage state officials about wildland urban interface codes and building practices that create resilience against wildfire. Students visited the State Capitol to meet with Senator Cutter and Gov. Polis to advocate for CO Senate Bill 23-166 that establishes a Wildfire Resilience Code Board. This Board will work to ensure community safety from and more resiliency to wildfires by reducing the risk of wildfires to people and property through the adoption of statewide codes and standards. This Bill was signed May 12th 2023! In addition to their advocacy the Resilience Team planted trees and participated in community events that bring awareness to watershed health.

Learn more about the RISE Challenge here.

We’re so excited to share these key experiences with you – these are the core of Environmental Action Civics.

Today we’re sharing an interview with Amelia Bernstein. Amelia went through the Earth Force Process as a student with one of our rockstar educators years ago and shares what that experience was like and how it changed her. She is now on our board of directors and attending college. We think you’ll really enjoy hearing her perspective about what makes youth-adult partnerships effective and the impact this experience can have on a young environmental citizen.

Today, our program crew will be digging into just a few of the many research articles that back up our Environmental Action Civics approach and our goals for getting youth engaged in environmental decision-making in order to be active and engaged community members now and in the future. 

Today we will be providing you with a little insider access to our annual Educator Workshop! We were joined by two practiced Environmental Action Civics educators: Carmen and Asim. Their experience and insight really helped us craft this workshop to be meaningful for the participants. During today’s episode we will be hearing from the workshop participants themselves, an absolutely stellar group of educators from across the country.

In this episode, our Program Team shares the Environmental Action Civics Roadmap. 

The Roadmap is a tool you can use to assess where you’re at in your EAC journey and the possibilities to delve deeper. 

Download your copy here!

Thanks so much to Emily Hertz from Denver Audubon for joining us to talk about Environmental Action Civics! She describes what it can look like in an environmental education organization (and how they’re experimenting with setting initial topic boundaries this year) – and the importance of relationships in doing this work.

Here at Earth Force, we are the home of Environmental Action Civics and we exist to increase youth participation in environmental decision making! In Environmental Action Civics, students share power with adults, they practice democratic decisionmaking and address local environmental problems using civics. Adults are right beside them igniting a new generation of decision makers.

And new this year, we’re introducing these Field Chats – every other Friday - in addition to our other supporting resources, we’ll be hosting these chats where we’ll be sharing our resources, tips and conversations with EAC practitioners.