Young Climate Authors

Global Learning Challenge

In a survey with over 10,000 children and youth, aged 16-25 in 10 countries, 59% of the participants reported feeling extremely worried, sad, angry,  helpless or guilty about climate change (Hickman et al., 2021). In another global survey, 300,000 students from 54 countries revealed that while 56% of the high school students had poor conceptual understanding of the causes, impacts and dynamics of climate change (Oliver & Adkins, 2020).   

To address the negative cognitive and affective responses to climate change and the lack of behavioral pathways,  UNESCO recommends the following learning objectives for SDG 13: Climate Action (Education for Sustainable Development Goals: Learning Objectives., 2017) : 

1. Improved Climate literacy i.e. learning about the causes & impacts of climate change and measures for mitigation & adaptation and their effectiveness.  

2. Socio-emotional learning: Learners should be able to understand their impact on the climate, explain the dynamics of climate change and its complex impacts, encourage others to take action and be able to collaborate with others to create strategies to combat climate change.

Furthermore, UNESCO recommends the use of innovative learning methods which integrate the cognitive, affective and behavioral domains of learning (Getting Every School Climate-Ready How Countries Are Integrating Climate Change Issues in Education, 2021). Other research echoes these recommendations. According to Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles (2020)’s climate education should be interdisciplinary, cooperative, participatory, place-based and experiential. Monroe et al. (2019)’s systematic review of literature emphasized that climate education should focus on personally relevant and meaningful information, use innovative and engaging teaching methods, enable discussions, provide interactions with scientists, address misconceptions and implement school or community-based projects. The UN emphasizes the importance of climate related action (Gibb, 2016; Not Just Hot Air: Putting Climate Change Education into Practice, 2015a). Hence there is an urgent need for effective CCE programs which are meaningful, relatable, place-based and address the three domains of learning holistically. 

However, the existing approaches to CCE globally are narrowly focused only on the cognitive domain and that too on knowledge transmission of the scientific causes and impacts of climate change. Students get daunted by the complexity and systemic nature of climate change, the jargon confuses them and they see no clear pathways to get involved and make a difference. This approach fails to build good climate literacy, does not address climate emotions and fails to show pathways for meaningful climate action ( Monroe et al., 2019; Rousell & Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020). However, we cannot realistically expect schools and traditional curriculum development bodies to create radical approaches to CCE since these bodies replicate dominant paradigms which do not address the underlying socio-historical-economic causes of climate change (Iyengar & Kwauk, 2021). It falls to grassroots environmental education (EE) bodies to create and impart such an education. However, these bodies do not have expertise in curriculum development or pedagogy. 

In summary, there is a need for an effective CCE program that helps students develop holistic climate literacy, manage and channel their climate emotions and enable them to take climate action.

The Young Climate Authors (YCA) is a book-authoring program where students author & digitally publish storybooks on climate change & climate justice.  Outcomes from the program are in line with UN SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for Goals).  

The YCA uses a framework based on Project-Based-Learning, critical pedagogy, transdisciplinary learning, arts based expression and storytelling.  Place-based pedagogy enables educators to contextualize the YCA  to local realities making learning meaningful and relatable. The constructivist, transdisciplinary design gives students the voice and choice to construct their knowledge and meaning-making about climate change. The critical lens builds understanding of climate justice. Storytelling and art shapes the understanding into storybooks. The YCA integrates cognitive, affective & behavioral domains of learning through multimodal learning experiences focusing on  

1. Climate Justice Learning : The YCA helps students understand how climate change is rooted in the inequality and dispossession perpetuated by the tri-phenomena of industrialization, colonization and capitalism and shaped by existing unequal societal structures. Students use this lens & their interactions with the local community to understand how climate change differentially impacts people based on their positionality. 

2. Managing Climate emotion: The YCA intentionally addresses climate emotion through pedagogical techniques like discussions, reflections and meeting with climate activists & stewardship activities to help students identify and manage emotions they experience when learning about climate change. 

3. Drive for Climate action: Storytelling has historically been a key part of social change movements as storytelling touches hearts, builds bridges and spurs action. The YCA provides the pathway for students to use digital storytelling as a powerful climate action.  

4. Glocal Perspectives about climate change: 

   1. Local: The YCA contextualizes the learning about climate change to local realities by understanding the impact of climate change and the response/ resilience measures locally through field trips, interactions with local activists and ethnographic research. This helps students imagine solutions which are rooted in their communities. The stories are also a form of documentation about place-based climate change experiences in the global south. 

   2. Global: The storybooks create shared understanding about the commonality and diversity of experiences of climate change with a global audience.  

 The YCA is implemented by EE organizations in non-formal educational settings, hence cuts the Gordian Knot of challenges of CCE in formal schooling. Educators from these organizations undergo a 12 week training on the YCA. They are then mentored in customizing the YCA to their local realities. Finally, implementation support in the form of consulting and hand-holding is provided.

Technology forms a core part of the learning experiences and delivery. Participants use technology to research climate change through online climate learning resources including text, visuals and audio, to communicate with peers via Email/ Whatsapp, create their storybooks using phones, Canva and illustration apps, amplify their work through social media using Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. The educators use learning management systems like Google Classroom or Canvas for organizing the learning modules. All these facets help build the much needed digital literacy skills for children in the global south.

A key goal for the YCA is to reach marginalized students in the Global South who bear the brunt of climate change and climate injustice through environmental education (EE) organizations embedded in these communities. These students often lack access to mainstream education itself for a plethora of reasons to do with institutionalized structures of oppression. When they do get access to education, innovative and cognitively challenging approaches are rarely used, given the underlying racist/classist beliefs that these students cannot ‘cope’ with such challenges (Sutoris, 2019).  Furthermore, educational programs which foreground their lived experiences or perspectives are invisibilized. 

Our research into the outcomes of previous book-authoring programs implemented with the marginalized Muslim community in India,  revealed a multidimensional impact of book authoring for environmental issues/ climate change. It also demonstrated how progressive pedagogies can be used to effectively provide CCE where students are co-creators of knowledge. The programs had a transformational impact as participants learned about and eventually authored storybooks about power & privilege in their communities and how that affects the marginalized humans and the more-than-humans in the face of  climate change. Cognitive outcomes included improved climate literacy, use of creative thinking & problem solving, academic engagement and use of metacognition. Additionally, the program improved literacy, communication & digital skills and honed thinking skills. The identity as an author, and the global reach of their books, created a sense of empathy, agency, empowerment and responsibility in the participants. The YCA improved socio-emotional learning as students improved  collaboration & communication skills.  The students' participation in the program had a multiplier effect on families and friends (Jamal et al, 2023, 2023a, 2023b).  We anticipate similar outcomes with the other marginalized target populations.

Specifically in Phase 2, the YCA will be pilot-tested at five sites in four countries with marginalized communities in 2024. The following are the details of the target populations for the Phase 2 pilot test:  

1. Chennai Climate Action Group, Chennai, India.  Population Characteristics: Urban, marginalized Dalit communities who bear the brunt of caste oppression in India, mix of gender. Age: 14-18. 

2. RHEADS, Chittor, India.  Population Characteristics: Rural, mixed gender, tribal communities who have faced historic socio-economic and cultural marginalization. Ages 11-14. 

3. African Network for the Promotion of Environmental Education (ANPEE), Yaounde, Cameroon. Population Characteristics: Urban, mixed gender, internally displaced communities. Age: 14-18.

4. Green Girls Platform, Lilongwe, Malawi. Population Characteristics:Urban, marginalized, largely female communities. Age: 14-18.

5. YES Global Initiatives, Kampala, Uganda, Population Characteristics: Urban, mixed gender, urban ghettoized youth 14-18.

Our background as members of the Muslim minority community, constructivist educators, practitioner-turned-researchers with over a decade of experience in alternative approaches to environmental education gives us the credentials to design and deliver the YCA.

We have over a decade of experience as community leaders.  We founded Al Qamar Academy, a non-profit school for Muslim minorities in Chennai, India, with the vision that schooling should encourage freedom of choice; forge community connections; enable stewardship activities; and contextualize the learning to local contexts. A key goal was to foster environmental consciousness in children through place & nature based education. Cogitation Club was started to provide similar learning opportunities to students not enrolled at Al Qamar. Since this kind of schooling was alien to the community which typically associated schooling with test scores, rote learning and textbooks, we conducted outreach programs, training sessions and community workshops, events.  Eventually, the school was recognized for its innovativeness by  educators and educational bodies in India, including the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education at the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research. 

The school shut down during the pandemic but Cogitation Club continued its work. The loss of the school made me realize that for my work to have a greater impact, I would need to upskill myself and enrolled as a doctoral student. The PhD program adds the needed academic rigor to my decade of field experience as a practitioner. Additionally, it enables me to integrate deeply held beliefs on how learning should happen for children, on how education must inculcate a sense of connection with other humans and more-than-humans, and how we must collectively and creatively imagine solutions for crises facing our planet today. My specific research focus to develop and implement an integrated, transdisciplinary and multimodal curriculum for climate change for Indian students led to the development of the YCA into a formal mini-curriculum in 2023.

When we pilot tested YCA with a cohort of Muslim preteens and teens in Chennai, our identity as Indian Muslims and for some, our identities as women as well as our practitioner experience of  educators embedded in the Muslim  community for over a decade shaped our work with the students who belonged to the same community. Together we built an understanding of climate change which reflected how Muslims, despite forming one-sixth of the global population, are minimally represented in the climate change discourse and policy making. Furthermore, our experience of climate change and our narratives which reflect our identities as Indian Muslims are rare. These in-group self-realizations provided the impetus for the students to create place-based stories on climate change. 

However, we recognize that our perspectives are limited to who we are and the sum of our experience, which cannot presume to know the realities for other marginalized communities or speak for them. Hence, we designed the YCA as a flexible framework which enables different educators to create learning experiences within the framework which are specific to the socio-economic, historical and cultural contexts of their learners.  

We have developed and implemented three versions of the environmental book authoring programs in Chennai, India, resulting in 45 child-authored storybooks (https://www.cogitation.in/book-authoring-programs/read-earth-author-books). We have also created and implemented an educator training on the YCA. The details are given below:

1. Young Earth Authors (2017): Designed and conducted the Young Earth Authors Program where 13 middle schoolers authored storybooks for children on nature, the environment and local social issues in Chennai, India.

2. Young Earth Authors (2020): Reimplemented the Young Earth Authors program during the pandemic as an online offering with 14 Participants who authored storybooks on nature, the environment and environmental degradation in Chennai, India.

3. Young Climate Authors (2023): Designed and implemented the Young Climate Authors, a climate change and climate justice education program with 18 middle and high school students in Chennai, India, resulting in 17 storybooks.

4. YCA Educator Training (2024) : Designed and conducted a 12 week online educator training program for 20 environmental educators from EE organizations in 9 countries across 3 continents on the YCA. 

The YCA went through a Stage 1 Pilot test with a small group of students belonging to the Muslim community in Chennai, India. In order to scale up the program we need to conduct a Stage 2 Pilot Test with other communities and in other countries. This will give us a broader understanding of the efficacy of the program and provide insights on where the program has to be modified. Hence, we classified the stage of our solution as a pilot. 

The YCA is a very innovative climate change education program developed using several research backed recommendations. However, the program needs to be scaled up to reach as many children in the global south as possible. MIT Solve provides the following opportunities to help us address the barriers we currently face:

1. Technology support to develop an LMS based version of the YCA educator training which would enable scaling up the program to reach many EE organizations across the globe. This is absolutely crucial to rapidly create a pool of trained educators for implementing the YCA in many places. 

2. Mentorship for business development and growth including a business model which would provide financial independence to support future implementations. As educators, our expertise lies in curriculum development and implementation and we are not experts in designing effective business models for social impact. 

3. Networking support & media communication strategy to amplify the program to stakeholders and potential supporters. This is required to expand our customer base, build buy-in from stakeholders and reach out to potential funders. As a small business based out of the global south, our access to meaningful resources and people is quite limited. 

4. Funding through grants for the Phase 2 Pilot Test and for creating the LMS based modularized educator training. This support is crucial as most EE organizations in the Global South are cash strapped and unable / unwilling to pay for the YCA related training and services especially since the program is in the nascent stages.

Research shows shortcomings in students’ cognitive understanding of climate change, a concerning basket of climate emotions and lack of pathways for meaningful climate action.  The existing CCE initiatives predominantly focus on knowledge transmission which is usually limited to the scientific causes and impacts of climate change. Research also shows that in order for children to engage with issues of climate change, they need good climate literacy, have constructive hope, be empowered to take action and see their voices recognized, affirmed and amplified. Hence, CCE needs to be transdisciplinary, multimodal, use place and nature based education and result in climate action.

The YCA  is a place-based book-authoring Project Based Learning program which integrates the cognitive, affective and behavioral domains of learning in a learner-centered manner where participants in the Global South learn about & publish storybooks on climate change, and undertake climate action.  Specifically, the YCA creates the following outcomes in participants: 

Cognitive: 

• builds a transdisciplinary understanding of climate change as a global phenomenon with differential impact based on geographic, gender and socio-economic positionality.  

• fosters critical thinking about climate change, especially adaptation & mitigation measures 

• provides a platform for creative thinking and storytelling around climate change. 

Affective : 

• enables participants to recognize, name and foreground the climate emotions generated by the learning process.  

• builds collaboration skills.

• engenders empathy and sense of solidarity with marginalized humans and nonhumans.

• build a sense of agency and empowerment. 

Action orientation 

• enables participants to design and implement a specific, time-bound, and effective climate action.

• fosters problem solving skills in developing climate action initiatives.

• enables learners to use digital tools to support their climate action initiatives.

Our research on previous pilot implementations showed multiple positive outcomes on learners, their communities and their schools. We expect to see similar outcomes when implemented in different contexts.  These outcomes would serve as evidence for moving adopting progressive pedagogies for CCE. We really can imagine a world, in which, every child can translate their lived experience of climate change into engaging stories and using technology, can share these with the entire world.

Problem: Students have

• Limited  & incorrect understanding of climate change  

• Negative climate emotions

• Lack of clarity on pathways for climate action.

Key Audience: Students belonging to marginalized communities in the Global South

Entry Point: EE organizations embedded in the communities

Steps for Change: 

• Creation of holistic, place-based, constructivist-critical pedagogy based CCE module

• Creation & implementation of YCA Educator Training

• Pilot testing

  • Stage 1: Single site with small group of students

  • Stage 2: Multiple sites across countries with small groups of students

• Program evaluation & amplification of results

• Further expansion through network of ‘train-the-trainer’ educators

Measurable Effect

• 75% of students author & publish place-based storybooks on climate change.

• 75% improve climate literacy

• 75% experience positive climate emotions

• 75% have sense of agency & empowerment for climate change action

Wider Benefit 

• Improved awareness of climate change among family & peers

• Inspiration to others to tell their stories

• Documentation of place-based, lived experience of climate change

• Evidence for efficacy of YCA for governments and education policy makers

• Wider adoption of YCA

Long Term Change: Overall improvement in students’: 

• Climate literacy,

• Climate emotions

• Increased participation in climate action.

Given that the project is in the 2nd phase of the pilot stage, we can share meaningful impact goals for this short term phase. Outcomes from this phase will inform the broader strategy for further roll-outs and greater impacts. 

Impact Goal

Measurement Indicators

Students author place based storybooks on climate change

• 50-75 student authored, place-based storybooks on climate change digitally published and accessible globally.

• 10-15 storybooks per site of implementation

Students' emotional response to climate change shifts to a basket of ‘positive’ climate emotions. 

• Results from pretest-posttest administration of an adapted version of the Inventory for Climate Emotions (Marczak et al, 2023) show that 75% of the participants experience ‘positive’ climate emotions

Students feel sense of agency and empowerment to act for climate change

• Results from pretest-posttest administration of an adapted version of the Inventory for Climate Emotions (Marczak et al, 2023) show that 75% of the participants report climate hopefulness and climate empowerment. 

• Results from focus group interviews show that 75% of the participants understand the importance of public sphere actions and plan to undertake them.

Students’ climate literacy improves

• Results from pretest-posttest climate change questionnaire (Jamal et al, 2023a) indicate a better understanding of the causes and impacts of climate change in a holistic manner as well as a better understanding of effective resilience, adaptation and mitigation efforts.

YCA had a multiplier effect on family and friends

• Results from a posttest qualitative survey with family and friends of participants show that 75% of the respondents feel that climate change is an important issue and are willing to take action on it.

10 educators from 5 EE organizations in 4 countries experienced in implementing YCA 

• Results from interviews with individual educators show that 75% express confidence in being able to implement the YCA independently. 

• Results from interviews with EE organization heads show that 75% are planning to implement the YCA again in their communities.

Technology in the form of online apps and communication apps are key enablers for the YCA.  Technology serves as a tool for the following 

1. Backbone: The backbone of YCA uses the CANVAS LMS. Instructors organize the student learning by creating modules, sharing resources, communicating, and giving feedback. The LMS is also used for housekeeping like tracking attendance, grading etc.

2. Information seeking: Students use online resources like articles, videos, online games and podcasts to build their understanding about climate change and climate justice. Of special importance are climate simulation apps like Understanding Climate Change from UC Berkeley, Google Earth Timelapse, Climate Central’s Coastal Screening app etc.

3. Externalizing cognition: Technology is a key tool for organizing the information and understanding students build about climate change. They use the Google suite of apps like Google Drive, Docs & Sheets to organize and store their research, reflections and ideas.  Mind Mapping apps like LucidCharts help them organize their thinking and represent it visually. 

4. External representation: As the students start constructing their stories, they use Google Docs to write and modify their drafts and other apps for creating illustrations. 

5. Product Creation & Sharing: Once the writing and illustration phase is completed, students use Canva to design their books. These books are published as flipbooks on Heyzine and easily shared to a global audience via links. The books can also be embedded into websites and blogs. 

6. Communication: Tools like gmail and Whatsapp are used by students to communicate with each other and with the facilitators. Students also share their work and communication with each other using the LMS 

7. Feedback: Instructors and peers provide feedback for students' work through the collaborative options in Google Docs.

3 Full Time Staff:

Aneesa Jamal : is the co-founder of Cogitation Club & the Program Manager for the YCA. She is responsible for the design, development, implementation, modification and ongoing evaluation of the YCA module. Aneesa has over 15 years experience in leadership roles at alternative schools/ learning centers.

Abubakr Jamal: is responsible for the learning experiences on climate change & climate justice. He has a background in Natural Sciences & posthumanism.

Hanin Fathima: is responsible for the book illustration section of the YCA. She has worked with adults and children for over 10 years on sustainable art.

Since 2017:

1. Young Earth Authors (2017): 13 middle schoolers authored storybooks on the environment and social issues in Chennai, India.  

2. Young Earth Authors (2020)- Online mode: Reimplemented the Young Earth Authors program during the pandemic as an online offering. 14 participants  authored storybooks the environment in Chennai, India. 

3. Young Climate Authors (2023): Designed and implemented the Young Climate Authors with 18 students in Chennai, India.   

4. YCA Educator Training (2024) : Designed and conducted a 12 week online educator training program for 20 environmental educators from EE organizations in 9 countries across 3 continents on the YCA. 

Cogitation Club is a small, family-owned, non-profit educational training organization.  All the members of the leadership team are members of the Muslim minority community in India. The organization is female-led. Most of our work is within our community of Muslims in India aimed at uplifting the educational outcomes.  We do not have plans to expand the team in the near future.  

However, in order to ensure that diverse and historically marginalized perspectives inform our work, we build partnerships with organizations representing these communities.  We intentionally reach out to EE organizations which are embedded in and represent historically marginalized communities in India like the Dalits, Scheduled Tribes, Pastoralists, economically underprivileged and women or similar groups in other countries. 

Inclusion means not only a physical presence of diverse members in our training and services, but that historically marginalized communities should have the agency to adapt our work to their local realities and lived experiences. The beauty of the YCA is that it is an adaptable framework which is used to develop lesson plans customized to local realities and issues of injustice.  We support the process of adaptation through our curriculum development and implementation expertise, but do not presume to know the ground realities which shape the individual lesson plans for the YCA Framework.

The business model for Cogitation’s YCA Projects is an embedded model where we provide services to schools and EE organizations 

Customer: EE Organizations in Global South.

Beneficiaries: Children and youth in Global South.

Partners & Stakeholders: 

• EE & CCE non-governmental organizations

• Students participating in the YCA & their families & communities

• Local governments

Customer Value Proposition: Research shows that effective EE programs build knowledge, foster positive emotions and provide pathways for action. EE organizations lack the subject matter expertise to build a curriculum or module which integrates all these domains of learning holistically. Hence, a majority of the existing programs conducted by EE organizations in the global south are focused on raising awareness and enhancing place based nature connection. However, the action taking component which is essential for students to build hope, empowerment and agency, is usually limited to short term, personal sphere actions which have been shown to be inadequate in impact. The YCA fills this gap. It is a research backed CCE program which integrates cognitive, affective and behavioral domains of learning in a child-centered manner. The program helps EE organizations enhance their CCE toolkit and meet goals for SDG 4,13 & 17.

Beneficiary value proposition (Students): Participants in the YCA will benefit from

• Improved climate literacy

• Enhanced agency & empowerment for climate action

• Positive basket of climate emotions.

Service: Enabling EE organizations to deliver the YCA through

• Educator training

• Mentoring YCA Customization 

• Implementation support.

Resources

• People:  

  • Short term: Cogitation core team

  • Long term: Trained educators in EE organizations who have 2 completed or more implementations;

• Technology: Online Apps, LMS

• Funding

• Library of climate education resources

Channels: 

• Social media

• Peer networking

• NAAEE and similar EE related organizations

Competition: Given our social goal of creating effective CCE, we do not subscribe to the term competition. Rather, we prefer to label these as similar offerings, who could be potential partners if the opportunity arose.

• Science, Camera Action!

• Lens on Climate Change

• Climate Stories Project.

Impact Measures

• # of storybooks written

• # of children/ youth impacted

• ###p#< of participants who changed in terms of  

  • Climate Literacy

  • Climate emotions

  • Climate Action

• # of EE organizations willing to adopt YCA

• # of EE educators trained

• # government bodies willing to adopt YCA.

Revenue Streams

• Consulting fees 

• Short term grants till the model is financially self-sustaining.

The YCA is an embedded program in Cogitation Club which is a non-profit, after school education organization.  The YCA Stage 1 Pilot program was funded through fees charged to the participating schools amounting to approximately $2400. These feeds subsidized the cost of the program and the shortfall was made up through personal funds.  The YCA Training was funded through a $2500 grant from the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). 

We are seeking funding for the 2nd Phase Pilot Test, where we need funds for both the program as well as for helping the partner organizations cover some of the costs associated with implementing the YCA. We face two key challenges. One, these organizations operate with marginalized communities and are very cash strapped themselves. Second, the YCA at this point lacks the credibility for these organizations to actually pay for the program even partially. Hence, for Phase 2, we are seeking grant funding for $10,000. This includes the cost of customization & implementation support ($4700), mini grants for the five implementation sites ($3750) & evaluation expenses ($1550). 

Once the program outcomes have been documented and shared and the YCA is modified as per the evaluation reports, we plan to continue implementing the YCA through partner EE bodies. However, from this stage onwards the following are the potential revenue streams: 

1. Program fees charged to EE organizations.  

2. Course fees from direct YCA implementations by Cogitation Club in schools and NGOs.

3. Short term grants to cover the gap between revenues and expenses.