Issue: Organizational Development

Climate activism can serve as a pathway for young people to develop as civic actors, leading to voting and to other forms of participation. There are opportunities to increase access for some youth—rates of taking climate action are lower for some groups, even after accounting for the skills that they bring to climate action. The youngest respondents (ages 14-19) were more likely than their slightly older peers (ages 20-24) to sign petitions, plan events, and use social media to inform and engage. All youth of color are more likely than white youth to plan events on climate and environmental issues. Liberals are most likely to sign petitions, have conversations, contact elected officials, and use social media compared to conservatives, moderate youth, and youth who don’t know their political ideology. Respondents living in rural areas are less likely to have conversations. There are opportunities to strengthen skills for some youth—including the ability to present and discuss information, and to inspire others to do actions (“readiness”), having the knowledge, skills, and availability to do the action (“efficacy”), and having the reasons and the support to do the action (“motivation”).

The “Before Action Review” is a series of questions for a team to answer together to improve their collective project. The five questions are: What is our intended result? What are our success measures? What challenges will we face? What did we learn from last time? What do we think will make us successful this time? The “After Action Review” is a similar set of questions to digest together, as a team, after a project attempt: What is our intended result? What were our actual results? What caused our results? What lessons should we take forward for next time? These kinds of collective planning and processing create the conditions for people to develop their: knowledge — information or understanding gained from experience or education; skills — the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice; and wisdom — the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight.