2022 Youth Leadership Training

Bringing seasoned youth leaders together, across all Earth Guardians programs, to strengthen their revolutionary leadership skills through the lens of intersectionality in climate and environmental justice.

The Earth Guardians 2022 Youth Leadership Training will bring together youth leaders from across the environmental and climate justice movements for a powerful five day event.

With an aim to support and enhance the current work of EG’s youth leaders, this comprehensive training will offer education and training on issue-based campaign development and project management, holistic and revolutionary leadership skills, and story-telling.

This training is specifically meant for seasoned youth leaders, and will be facilitated by experienced movement builders, mentors, and trainers, alongside EG staff and youth leaders.

 August 11-15, 2022

Collins Lake Ranch, the ancestral lands of the Ute, Diné, and Apache, in Cleveland, NM

This training is limited to current members of EG’s youth leadership teams including the EG Youth Council, Youth Staff, Regional Directors, National Crew Leads, and Speakers Bureau.

For more information contact us at reachout@earthguardians.org

The Need

Within the climate justice movement, youth – among many other groups on the margins – are on the frontlines of addressing climate change and ecological disasters. The youth leadership at Earth Guardians recognize that climate and environmental youth activists, organizers, movement leaders, and influencers often enter the climate activism space feeling “thrust” into it, without much, if any, professional training. Like many activists and leaders, youth and young people learn as they go, and are often left wondering where and how to take their leadership to the next level of engagement and impact. 

The EG Youth Leadership Training (YLT) will provide a rich space for our engaged climate justice youth activists to learn and accelerate the grassroots work that they do in their communities and with their Earth Guardian Crews. Too often, youth engage in activism work and positions of leadership, due to the urgency they feel to respond to the critical issues posed by climate change, which are rapidly destroying the youth experience of the present and dimming our hope for the future. We have found that much of the time, youth activists learn the ropes with their activism out of necessity, without receiving formal training or guidance. The EG YLT will give youth participants formal training, mentorship, and guidance, to up-level their effectiveness as youth leaders in the climate and environmental justice movements, providing them with professional development and tactical skills on campaign development and management, revolutionary and holistic leadership, public speaking, and various avenues of engagement and creative activism within the movement. 

 

Goals and Takeaways

This training has been specifically designed for EG’s seasoned youth leaders, including our Youth Council members, national Crew leads, Speakers Bureau, and youth staff, to increase their capacity for impactful leadership and project/campaign development in their local communities and with their Crews. Participants will leave the training prepared to engage with and amplify the Earth Guardians 2022 Choose Action Now campaign, culminating on a global day of action during COP27. Youth in attendance will also be eligible to apply for an Earth Guardians Project Grant, offering monetary support in the form of micro-grants, to kick start their grassroots efforts following the training. 

This training will deepen the participant’s commitment to climate justice work across Earth Guardians youth leadership programs, fully prepared to target their efforts to address local issues within their home communities. The impact of youth leadership training ripples outwards, not only benefitting those in attendance, but also those youth that the attendees work with, and inspire to action, in their home localities and Crews. Impact will be measured by global engagement in our 2022 Choose Action Now campaign, the amplification of our Project Grants program, and the impact of Crew projects and youth-led campaigns following the training. 

Workshop topics:

1. How to lead and organize a campaign and how to develop a project from start to finish

  • How to build effective communication structures within organizing spaces

  • Pre-planning actions and working with group dynamics

  • Knowing your “opponent” - power analysis and campaign break down

2. Telling Your Story and sharing your messaging 101

  • Across social media platforms

  • Getting started with public speaking

  • Request for interviews and how to prepare and deliver an interview

  • How to represent your community, peers, and partners

3. Holistic leadership

  • How everyone is a leader

  • Leadership with accountability, honesty, compassion, and empathy

  • Leadership via modeling care and radical love for community and colleagues

  • Conflict management and non-violent communication

4. Activism

  • The meaning and purpose of activist archetypes

  • What do we want the future of activism to look like?

  • What is the world that we want to create?

  • EG youth leadership presentations about alternative and creative ways to engage in the climate justice movement

Through the YLT, participants will: 

  • Refine their leadership skills specific to the climate justice movement

  • Develop an individual grassroots action plan or campaign to implement in their own communities

  • Be prepared to engage and amplify EG’s international Choose Action Now campaign

  • Receive ongoing and continued support in the development and implementation of the trainees’ campaigns, projects, and leadership platforms

  • Practice both hard and soft-skills for leadership, and leave prepared to share these skillsets with youth from their communities to magnify impact

  • Deepen connections with other youth leaders across EG programs, and with EG staff members, mentors, and EG partners

  • Be given time for healing/processing/time in nature and sharing of tools for physical and mental wellbeing

  • Be eligible to apply for an EG Project Grant, to receive financial support via micro-grants and kick start their local projects and campaigns