Youth Involvement

"As Canadian youth, we declare our right and accept our responsibility: our right to a healthy future and our responsibility to ensure the same for our children.

The arctic is melting before our eyes and is destroying Indigenous cultures and peoples. Hurricanes and super storms are raging around the world. Small island nations are disappearing due to sea levels rising while our governments and industries are ignoring the greatest crisis of our time. We are seeing over the tipping point. We are seeing this all in our lifetime. This is the world in which we live, and this is the world that we, as youth, are inheriting. This is the world we refuse to pass on to our children. The climate crisis is upon us. Our choice is clear.

Today we are standing up. Today we are drawing our line in the sand. We are saying thus far and no further. We will no longer be silenced. We will no longer compromise our future. We will create alternatives, we will mobilize ourselves and we will build a better world."

Canadian Youth Climate Coalition Declaration

All over the world, children and youth of all ages, from the playground to the university lecture hall, are standing up to fight for humanity's collective future.

We can see it in the burgeoning interest for schools to take on local schoolyard gardens and energy conservation projects. We can see it in the thousands of universities and colleges across Canada that have established formal campus sustainability initiatives. Within the field of education, a whole movement centered around ecoliteracy is taking root.

On the world stage, young people refuse to be silenced. Representing their concerns at major international negotiations such as the Canadian Youth Delegation at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15), young people are actively working to influence decision makers as they fight for their — and our — collective future.

In Alberta, there are numerous ways for youth of all ages to get involved, whether this means starting a local project at home, at school and in the community — or getting involved in national and international efforts.

Inspiring Stories

More Than a Few Solar Panels

In 2000, two teachers at Cochrane High School wanted to teach their students about alterative sources of energy and human impacts on the environment, and to give them the opportunity to turn their knowledge into action. The students took to the initiative more eagerly than the teachers could have ever imagined.

Their plan was to install solar panels and a wind turbine on the roof of the school. This was just the beginning of a comprehensive school sustainability initiative that has involved students in all grades of the high school, and brought together the entire community. Nine years later, the Cochrane High School Sustainable Development Project has a plan to move through four phases of their school's sustainable development project. Most recently, a wind turbine was installed on the roof of the school, right beside the first array of 30 solar panels installed in 2004.

International Organizations

Tunza, from the United Nations Environment Programme, offers examples of youth action around the world.

Unite for Climate: A site for young people to find out how youth are responding to climate change, learn about their experiences, and join in campaigns from around the world

Get involved in Canada

The Canadian Youth Climate Coalition is a united front of youth from across Canada tackling the biggest challenge of our generation, the emerging climate crisis.

The Sierra Youth Coalition is an organization run by youth and for youth, serving as the youth arm of the Sierra Club of Canada. SYC has grown into a nation-wide network, with hundreds of registered members and thousands of dedicated volunteers, operating in 72 colleges and universities and in 50 high schools.

Powershift is a major youth initiative to influence Canada's position on climate action at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2009. On October 23-26, 2009, over 1000 young people from across the country will converge on Ottawa to take a message of bold, comprehensive and immediate federal climate action to Parliament Hill.

A dream born in Kenya has become a charitable organization of hopeful young people uniting as the Otesha Project. Otesha, which means "reason to dream" in Swahili, was created to mobilize youth to create local and global change through their daily consumer choices. We believe that there are alternatives to our culture of overconsumption, and that each one of us has opportunities to have positive impacts every single day.

DreamNow is a charitable organization that produces ideas that do good for the world.

My World, My Choice! Become a youth mentor and help junior high school students design local sustainability initiatives within their schools

The Redfish School of Change is a non-profit program that developed through a shared recognition that the world is in a troubled state, and that it deeply needs people, in their own communities and bioregions, to facilitate positive change.

Campus Sustainability

University of Calgary Office of Sustainability

University of Alberta Office of Sustainability

Environmental Coordination Office of Students (ECOS), Students' Union, University of Alberta

Sustainability Centre, Students' Association, Mount Royal University