Youth Leadership and Mobilization - does it work? | eePRO @ NAAEE
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Youth Leadership and Mobilization - does it work?

Fri, 2017-09-15 06:23

Dear fellow educators,
Greetings from the heart of Europe. WWF is in the process of developing a new Global Education Strategy and within it I'M focusing on the Youth mobilization/leadership component. I'm looking for leads, ideas, and research that focus on youth (young adults 15-30 years old) and mobilizing /engaging /empowering this target group.

We have numerous examples of programs working with young adults, but we'd be interested if there was any research out there that we could "show" to support such work.
- Do youth leadership programs lead to greater environmental responsibility?
- Do they lead to tangible results, impacts, outcomes?
- What are the key components/good practices for having a successful youth program?
- Who are the most successful organizations (potential partners) & individuals working in this field?

If you have answers or leads, please forward them to me! and let's get the discussion started!

Generation Earth, WWF Austria's Youth Leadership Program

Tue, 2017-09-19 10:33

Nate! How nice to see your name pop up on EE Pro! You should monitor the progress of a project that NAAEE is doing in partnership with Stanford called eeWorks! Learn more at https://naaee.org/our-work/programs/eeworks. In a nutshell, the project is reviewing/summarizing all the available literature and research on a variety of EE outcomes, and developing communication tools practitioners and funders can use to increase funding for EE. The initial list of outcomes includes the impacts EE has on: k-12 academic success, environmental conservation, youth leadership and development, and connecting youth to nature. The youth leadership and development outcome area is slated to be worked on in the coming year. Contact Nicole Ardoin and/or Judy Braus for more info. Good luck!

Thu, 2019-02-07 10:09

Hello Nathan!

I love hearing that WWF will be focusing more on youth leadership development. It's so important that we help foster the next generation of conservation leaders.

I am the Teen Programs Supervisor at the Houston Zoo in Houston, Texas. We have an ever growing and evolving teen program that reaches over 200 teens every year. This past year we worked with a consultant from PEER Associates to help us do exactly what you are asking about. We wanted to evaluate the effectiveness of our program both in the short term and long term. We also looked specifically at how our program is helping to develop critical thinking skills in its participants. We just finished with the evaluation and got our final report back. I would be happy to share a copy of the results with you if you are interested. I think the report will provides you with some answers to some if not all of your questions.

Feel free to email me at ccavanaugh@houstonzoo.org

I would also love to hear what all you find out from this research.

Colleen