Young people are leading climate action in several Cincinnati neighborhoods, with support from a new grant program.
This year, the city distributed nine awards through the international Youth Climate Action Fund initiative, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
“This opportunity allowed us to really give project ownership over to youth, ages 15 to 24, and allow them to design what they want to see moving forward with our city,” said Indira Thompson, a fellow in the city's Office of Environment and Sustainability.
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“We want to ensure that the people who are experiencing different climate impacts are the ones coming up with the solutions," Thompson said. "We don't want to speak on behalf of anyone else.”
She says those solutions ranged across the nine awardees.
The Madisonville Youth Council started a composting program. Nonprofit Mt. Airy CURE planted a garden for kids. And a group of University of Cincinnati students did environmental education involving Burnet Woods.
Jennifer Tomak helped lead the Burnet Woods project.
She says many of the elementary and high school students who live within a mile radius of the park have never set foot in it.
“One of our missions was to increase environmental education and get students into parks,” Tomak said at a showcase of the projects in December. “With the grant, we were able to create a lot of videos that hit on different levels of the Ohio Science Education Standard so that they could be used in the classroom.”
Each of the youth-led and youth-serving projects also addressed a focus area in the Green Cincinnati Plan, the city’s climate action guide.
Young people’s involvement in the grant program did not only happen through doing the projects, says Rachel Bickett, energy equity project coordinator in the Office of Environment and Sustainability.
A group of young leaders of local environmental organizations reviewed and selected the initiatives to fund.
“This project has really been youth run through and through, all the way from Indira and I leading the initiation process and outreach, to the young people who got to make the decisions on the grants, to all the amazing young people who are implementing the grants right now,” Bickett said.
The nine groups are wrapping up their projects before the new year. But, neighborhood-level climate action in the city continues.
The Youth Climate Action grants are part of the city’s Seeds of Change Grant Program, which supported 19 additional environmental initiatives, from the Beekman Corridor to Mt. Washington.