Young Leaders for Climate Resilience Program Evaluation at The Wild Center
Client: The Wild Center | Location: Tupper Lake, NY | Funding: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
We measured the impact of The Wild Center’s place-based and youth-focused program focused on strengthening environmental literacy and community resilience to climate change.
OVERVIEW
Over three years, we partnered with The Wild Center to support planning for social impact as well as lead formative and summative evaluation of the Convening Young Leaders for Climate Resilience program, which serves students, teachers, and communities in New York state, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Environmental Literacy Program (ELP) grant.
This program was born out of a decade of youth-focused climate programming at The Wild Center, including internationally acclaimed Youth Climate Summits, youth leadership development, and youth-led outreach to local communities to build environmental literacy and community resilience to climate change.
APPROACH
Our partnership included three phases over three years:
Planning for social impact by convening project partners to articulate their unique vision for the intended impact of the project on its audiences and beyond
Formative evaluation to identify the program’s strengths and weaknesses in supporting youth climate action and leadership, teacher professional development, and community resilience, and
Summative evaluation of the organization-level impact of the program on project partners, because we understood that each partner organization wields influence on particular audiences beyond the reach of The Wild Center, amplifying the program’s impact.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
We found that the project strongly supported creating opportunities for youth to lead and explore their passion for climate change. Similarly, community leaders and teachers were invigorated by seeing young people’s passion for climate issues, sparking enthusiasm to support local climate action.
Among partner organizations, the program’s impact varied–some experienced significant changes while, for others, the shifts were more subtle. One unexpected takeaway for The Wild Center was the impact of their partnership with the New York State Climate Smart Communities program on youth climate leadership in local communities and fostering partnerships with local governments. Inspired by promising findings from the formative and summative evaluations, The Wild Center applied for and secured another round of NOAA funding to continue to develop its youth climate programs in partnership with the New York State Climate Smart Communities program with a particular focus toward rural communities in New York.
