A Decade of Care About Climate
Happy Birthday Care About Climate!!
Care About Climate turns 10 years old, and we want to celebrate! Join me on Friday the 16th at 7:00 pm ET for games, learn more about the organization, and bring a cupcake to celebrate with us. You can register here!
In 2012, I started participating on the Sierra Student Coalition’s International Committee, and in November of that year I went to my first UN Climate Conference, COP18 in Doha, Qatar. I was able to meet incredible people that had influenced UN Climate Policy, but also hundreds of youth that were just as passionate about protecting the environment and their homes as I was. Over the next few years, I rose in leadership in the Sierra Student Coalition International Committee and began leading delegations of young people to the UN Climate Conferences leading up to COP21, the conference where the Paris Agreement was signed. While I loved the Sierra Student Coalition, it was not getting the support it needed from the Sierra Club, and it was only domestic focused for the most part. I wanted to help build a global movement to address the climate crisis.
Two things seemed to be missing in the movement, a truly international based youth education and advocacy organization, and a symbol to connect us all across the globe. The symbol, or Climate Sign, would connect us across continents. The goal was for youth to engage their communities to get people to care about climate.. This was in 2014, and I was 22. I had a handful of friends help get Care About Climate started in Tucson, AZ. Aaron, who helped me get the organization incorporated, David who designed the climate sign, Martha and Don who helped with film/photography and designed the website as we launched the organization, Jerad who helped me write the bylaws, and Leah and Nick who helped coordinate all these people to serve as a Board of Directors.
We launched the climate symbol at the 2014 Climate March in New York, ahead of a meeting of the UN to talk about climate action leading up to the Paris Agreement, which would be signed in 2015. Throughout 2014 and 2015 we developed a website, started organizing in the Youth NGO (YOUNGO) space in the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC), and prepared for the Paris Climate Talks. Once I graduated with my Master’s in Development Practice in May of 2015, Care About Climate launched its first effort, which was a cross country road trip to educate communities about the Paris Agreement. Don and I presented to hundreds of people across Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Montana, Missouri, and Illinois on a budget of around $1000.00 that we had just barely raised. At the end of the trip, I went to Paris, leading the Sierra Student Coalition’s delegation to the conference. These incredible people supported me in launching Care About Climate and allowed me to bring its projects into our organizing during COP21. I want to give a special thank you to Katie, Jessica, Angela, Caroline, Lauren, Jacqueline, Emerson and Randy. You were critical in giving me the confidence to see out this vision, and I am so proud of the work we did to influence US Negotiators to say yes to a more ambitious agreement.
While in Paris, Care About Climate met another group, the Climate Sign, which had a very similar goal of using a symbol, in this case a hand sign to connect people around the world. This group was also led for youth and by youth. We quickly connected with Hadley, AJ, Jeff and others and met to discuss how we could merge projects in LA, California in 2016. Care About Climate was an organization while the Climate Sign was a project. Our two groups were able to combine our power, and began to grow the popularity of the Climate Sign throughout the US. In 2016, Care About Climate became accredited with the UNFCCC and sent our first delegation to the UN Climate Talks, COP22, in Morocco. While we continued our international advocacy, Care About Climate also took on Sierra Student Coalitions program, the Online Youth Exchange. We would partner young people together internationally to share their climate experiences with one another, and to support the projects they would work on in their own countries. The initial grouping of people came from the US and China as the largest historical emitter, and the present largest global emitter. Sarah led that program magnificently with Emery. This is also the year we first presented and tabled at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability and Higher Education (AASHE) conference to get more young people involved with our programs.
2017 was a year of network, connection, and movement moments. Care About Climate had become members of the Powershift Network as well as the US Climate Action Network (USCAN). The organization supported the founding of Zero Hour, which was a collective of organizations that put on the Youth Climate March in DC that summer. Later, Zero Hour became its own youth led organization that operates still today. The two day event began with a youth lobby day, and the second day, hundreds of young people showed up in the pouring rain to show their support for true US climate action the day of the march. In addition to supporting the Zero Hour youth march, our team helped build out an Asset Map with the USCAN Building Power from the Grassroots Up Action Team to understand what the climate movement looked like at a national scale. This helped Care About Climate understand other organizations we could connect with to introduce the Climate Sign. Our team also sent a delegation to Bonn, Germany, and worked in YOUNGO to promote youth friendly policies in the UNFCCC.
In 2018 the organization focused significantly on communication campaigns around the Climate Sign demanding the world #Sign4Change. Care About Climate began to work with zoos and aquariums to do climate focused events and connected them with the Climate Sign. We also connected with the groups we had learned about in 2018 with the Asset Map to encourage them to use the sign as well. However, Care About Climate reached a plateau.
The organization had a transformational moment in 2019 and 2020 thanks to the work of Sabina, Sydney, Logan, Renata, Vitoria, Sarah, Sara, Alvaro, Hailey, Danielle and many others. Sabina became the Chief Operations Officer of the organization, and the knowledge, care, and support she brought to the organization allowed the organization to increase its impact and prominence in the international space. She brought a new perspective and understanding of excellence to the organization, and professionalized Care About Climate (CAC) so we could start internationally recognized programs like ClimAcademy, an online youth capacity building program, which Sarah and Alvaro managed. Logan leveled up the technology we were using, and standardized how the organization managed and worked with the data we had, while also influencing the vision of the organization to move past marketing and communications to action. Sara, Hailey, and Danielle served on a governance committee to review CAC’s bylaws and suggest changes to them to make them more relevant to the way the organization operated after 5 years of existence. They also provided policy guidance around equity for the organization. Sydney was our first COP delegation leader, and gave so much more capacity to make our delegations to COPs more impactful and strategic. She also worked closely with me to launch and find funding for Care About Climate’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) Equity Tracker, which looked at how country pledges (Nationalionally Determined Contributions) incorporated youth and gender concerns into the pledges. Renata, who participated in the Online Youth Exchange, started EmpoderaClima, a youth feminist platform bringing the perspective of young women, girls, and others to the international space. Finally, Vitoria pulled it all together and provided a true communications and marketing committee to tell the story of Care About Climate. She developed a new branding guide, and incredible posts that actually engaged people around the world. Our team became more cohesive, communicative and effective. We also were finally able to meet in person for the first time since 2016 because of the fundraising and effort these individuals brought to the table.
Care About Climate has always been a volunteer and youth led organization, which was becoming harder for me to manage after 8 years with a full time job and managing Care About Climate on top of it. I was getting stretched thin, and the organization was feeling it. I was feeling it. In 2021, Care About Climate was on a different plane than it had been a few years ago. Our delegations to COP were influencing the text that was being decided by negotiators, our COP course program (derived from ClimAcademy) had dozens of participants, there were 50 volunteers from countries around the world, I was serving as the US Climate Action Network International Liaison building up our prominence in the US community, and the idea of starting CAC clubs around the world was being floated as an idea. There were also incredible volunteers that could bring a new energy to the organization and a younger perspective. In 2022, at the age of 30, I resigned as the Executive Director of Care About Climate and have been more in a support role since. Hailey from the US and Opeyemi from Nigeria stepped up to be the new Co-Executive Directors of the organization, and the results have been incredible.
I have always told people that success for Care About Climate looks like two things, 1) we solve the climate crisis with youth leading the way, or 2) the organization is able to flourish without me. All my dreams have come true. The leadership at Care About Climate is incredible. Since 2022, Care About Climate has become the premier international youth organization working on climate issues. Members of CAC manage working groups of YOUNGO, attend and influence conversations at all the regional climate weeks, provide the submissions on behalf of YOUNGO for the UNFCCC, have paid participation in their COP course, lead the Local Conference of the Youth for the US, serve on the steering committee for the new US youth policy council, have thousands of followers on social media and a robust education effort using these tool, have nearly 100 volunteers from 41 countries, and continue to provide analyses of the NDCs that countries have submitted. In addition to the success of the programs, the organization is truly led by youth from around the world, and to make it more equitable, leaders are finally getting stipends for their volunteer work. The impact that Care About Climate has on the international climate movement is deep, and is felt worldwide. Ten years later, I could not have imagined where the organization would end up. Now we are here, and it is time to celebrate.
Care About Climate turns 10 years old, and we want to celebrate! Join us on Friday the 16th at 7:00 pm ET for games, learn more about the organization, and bring a cupcake to celebrate with us. You can register here.
