Engaging Students in Sustainability

The Partnership for a Green City and Brightside holds two Youth Summits each year in the fall of the school year and again in the spring.  Approximately 300 public, parochial, and private school student leaders will learn how to transform their schools to be “green”, working within a state education initiative called Kentucky’s Green & Healthy Schools Program. This interactive program challenges students to investigate sustainability issues and promote individual responsibility for the earth and their school.  

Youth Summit empowers students to examine their personal choices and address ways in which they can make small changes in their daily living that will result in improved health and environmental impact at school, at home and in the Louisville metropolitan area. Participants develop leadership skills and strategies necessary to implement environmental stewardship principals in their schools in areas of energy, green spaces, transportation, resource management, hazardous chemicals, indoor air quality, storm water, climate change. Volunteer mentors from businesses in the community work with the students to bring them real world experience.

In Spring 2013, the Youth Summit offered students the opportunity to display their environmental outcomes from previous Youth Summit projects and also be recognized for their work at their schools with two five hundred dollar prizes to further their sustainability projects. 

Youth Summit is an easily replicated project to engage students that creates sustainability leaders for the future, engaging people from the community as mentors to assist the schools with their projects. It can be as revenue rich/efficient as needed.