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Youth Climate Summit

Our goal is for students to foster connections - with nature, with themselves, and with each other - and to enable students to turn climate anxiety into climate action.

Please click here for more information on the 2024 Climate Summit.

Take a peek at previous Youth Climate Summit highlights:

The first ever PK-12 Youth Climate Summit in May of 2023 was an event celebrating sustainability through the lens of various careers, student research and presentations, and hands-on workshops

2023 Highlights included:

  • Pre-K-12 science research presentations, including presentations by HS students from other schools and states

  • Partnerships with 8 other middle and high schools

  • An evening event open to all community members

  • Birds of Prey, snakes, turtles, & other encounters with the Sharon Audubon animals

  • A visit from the BOCES Green Machine

  • Electric vehicles, hybrids, and solar-powered engineering design

  • Workshops utilizing GUFS green spaces, including our 181-acre school forest

  • Local eco-vendors, food trucks, & evening workshops

Check out the 2023 Youth Climate Summit Journal here 

 

2022:

Garrison made history! On Friday, 5/20/22, The Garrison School hosted its first K-8 Youth Climate Summit. The day was full of hands-on workshops centered on connecting students with nature, careers in science, and empowering them to turn climate anxiety into climate action. The Garrison School brought in 13 guest experts who led workshops throughout the school's substantial green spaces. Students foraged in the 181-acre Garrison School Forest, learned from NASA botanists and biomimicry engineers, interacted with live birds of prey, reptiles, and snakes, explored the Green Machine - a truck with a multitude of interactive forms of renewable energy - and so much more.

The day began with 11 student volunteers from 4th-8th grade, working together to lead a keynote speech about the merit of our local environment, challenges it's facing, and what we can do to help. From Kindergarten to 8th grade, Garrison students left the Summit with the understanding of why we should fight to make the world a greener place - and the knowledge and power of how to do it. Read about it here:

Did you Know?

The Youth Climate Summit shirt was designed by one of our Garrison students, Sebastian Rasic! It's made using 100% recycled materials, its packaging is compostable, and the local business that makes it (Rosemary and Moss) works in partnership with Etsy's "Climate Pledge." 


 The Youth Climate Summit is co-sponsored by GCEF & the GUFS PTA