It’s Getting Hot In Here

Youth from all over are working to create a clean energy economy and a just and sustainable society.  We are engaging our peers and building climate solutions as we speak. Youth are transforming that vision and power into action that will give us the tools to generate concrete and sweeping changes in our communities worldwide! Check out the opportunities below for incredible trainings and action camps, organizing projects and awesome climate-related events.

Organizing

• Mountain Justice Summer (May 17-23 & all summer, Camp Blanton, KY & Appalachia): Mountain Justice Summer is a call to action and a request for help from the people of the Appalachia mountains for help in saving our mountains, streams–and forest from greedy coal companies. With an emphasis on education, strategy, non-violence and cultural sensitivity the MJS training camp will provide participants with comprehensive workshops covering the impacts and politics behind mountain top removal mining and the hands-on tactical training to take to the mountains and do something about it. Take this opportunity to share strategies and build relationships that will create an even stronger network of allies and coalitions organizing resistance to MTR this summer and beyond! Contact: danny@seac.org
• Summer of Solutions (June 1-Aug 1st, Twin Cities, MN): In the Summer of Solutions young people from around the country will work together to engage communities across the Twin Cities in cutting-edge community-based global warming solutions and to build a strong network of new climate leaders with the skills to lead their communities towards a sustainable future. With the help of youth mentors and community allies and the support of other participants like yourself, you’ll get to shape course of the Summer of Solutions through your own work. We will focus on harnessing the power of community by building the capacity of existing local and national alliances, and integrate a broad range of student-run initiatives and strategies through a systems-based approach to climate activism that unites policy change, social entrepreneurship, movement capacity building, and community organizing. Projects include working with Cooperative Energy Futures to advance residential energy efficiency, and ARISE (Alliance to Re-Industrialize for a Sustainable Economy) to help develop and use the local Ford Assembly Plant as an example of the new green industrial paradigm. Contact: summerofsolutions@gmail.com
• Northwest Institute for Community Energy: ” A Think-and-Do Tank” (July 7 - August 24th, Portland, OR): The Northwest Institute for Community Energy (NICE) will be a seven-week-long, hands-on training program focusing on innovative renewable energy project development, community organizing and activism. A team of young people will work over the summer in Portland to advance an innovative, cooperatively-owned neighborhood geothermal heating and cooling system while receiving trainings and hands-on experience in a variety of activism, organizing and project management skills. Participants will also take part in the week-long Environmental Leadership Training Program (SPROG) run by the Sierra Student Coalition in Oregon, August 10-17th. The seven week program will conclude with a week-long backpacking adventure in the Cascade Mountain Range. The NICE program, a project of the Cascade Climate Network, is a winner of the Focus the Nation/ClifBar Project Slingshot grant contest and will be run in partnership with Portland State University, MidTech Energy, and the Portland Office of Sustainable Development. Contact: Jesse Hough (email) or Nathan Jones (email).
• Fired Up Media (all summer, Washington DC & global): Fired Up Media is a new media network – by and for youth – that is nimble, global, with full-spectrum capacity to cover the most important story of our time, the impact of global warming and the construction of a clean energy economy powerful enough to build a more just world. Through the training of a global network of youth climate activists and writers in powerful new organizing and communications tools, Fired Up Media will empower the global youth climate movement to face up to the challenge of our and all future generations. This summer, Fired Up Media is looking to work with young people to launch the global correspondents network, Climate Dispatch (a regular news wire that will be syndicated to campus and local news sources), documentaries in partnership with Link TV, and Fired Up Africa (project to get technology and training to young activists in Africa). Contact: richard@aidemocracy.org

Trainings/Action Camps

• Energy Action Coalition’s MEGA Camp (August 13th-17th, St. Paul, MN): A large-scale training program to equip youth leaders with the skills and resources necessary to run a large-scale field campaign, Power Vote or otherwise! The goal is to bring innovative strategies to the grassroots and to train a powerhouse team of organizers prepared to train thousands more young people, building an unstoppable ground force this November and beyond. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with a deadline of June 30th. Contact: trainings@energyaction.net
  
• SPROG (10 week-long programs, OR, CA, NM, MN, TX, GA, VA, PA, NH, PR): The Sierra Student Coalition’s week-long summer training programs (SPROGs) are nationally recognized and feature some of the country’s top student environmental leaders. They offer a perfect opportunity to get the grassroots organizing and leadership skills you need to organize and rise to the growing climate challenge. With 10 trainings around the country and spread throughout the summer, the SSC aims to train hundreds of students in grassroots organizing and connect them with organizing opportunities during the summer. Contact: jon@ssc.org.
• Citizens Direct Action Camp (June 1-6th, MT): The Citizen’s Direct Action Training Camp will be five day training and include skills needed to do effective Direct Action Campaigning against dirty fossil projects and for a clean energy future. We will confront the massive development along Rocky Mountain Corridor from Fort MacMurry, Alberta all the way to New Mexico including the development of the Alberta Tar Sands, oil shale in Utah and Colorado, Montana’s plan to import fossil fuels from Alberta, Mountaintop Removal and the expansion of transmission lines from coal-fired power plants. Contact: jr@globalwarmingsolution.org
• Southeast Climate Convergence (Late July, Louisa County, VA): This year’s convergence will be hosted in Virginia where communities are fighting uranium mining, nuclear power, mountaintop removal coal mining, and new (as well as old) coal plants. Once again we will unite to fight the coal industry’s stranglehold on our region while rejecting the deadly nuke industry’s attempt to position themselves as the solution to the climate crisis. The convergence is a place to strengthen our movement, network with new allies, and take action against dirty energy while working to build a sustainable world. Contact: risingtide@mountainrebel.net
  
• Northeast Climate Confluence (Late July, Worcester, MA): At this summer’s Northeast gathering we will be coming together from many backgrounds (multi generational, multi-racial, multi-gender, etc.) to help create the tangible changes we need within our communities. The focus will be on the needs and knowledge of communities that are most negatively effected by fossil fuel mining, burning, and by climate related disasters. The camp will include: over a week of workshops; issue based, skills based, trainings; strategy planning; and social events for networking and sharing stories in a fully sustainable gathering. Contact: northeast@climateconvergence.org
• West Coast Climate Convergence (July 28-August 4th, near Eugene, OR): The West Coast Convergence for Climate Action will be situated near a community that is fighting a proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal on the Columbia River. We are working with and supporting many of the local residents in their campaign against LNG, as well as with activists resisting dams, highway expansions, nuclear and other forms of dirty and unjust energy. The convergence will be a space for celebration, for kids and families, a place to socialize with friends old and new. Contact: westcoast@climateconvergence.org
• Real Food Challenge Leadership training (July 27-29th, CA): This summer thewest coast region is hosting a Real Food Challenge Leadership training to prepare young student leaders with trainings, skill shares, workshops, and the ability to work across their respective institutions and broader communities to cultivate Real Food on Campus. More information will be on the website in April.
• RAN/SEAC Regional Trainings (CA, NY/NJ): More details to come
• Change It (July 16-21st Boston, MA & July 26-31st Seattle, WA) : Change It provides an opportunity for student leaders already committed to protecting the environment, leading social change and taking action to learn the skills and tools they need to become effective leaders. Change It participants will work one-on-one with Greenpeace mentors, who will provide personalized training on campaign strategy, recruitment, and event planning. Students will emerge from the program ready to engage in the efforts necessary to prevent global warming and address the most critical issues facing their generation. The website will go live in April. Contact: mary.nicol@sfo.greenpeace.org
• Rainbow Warriors Youth Theater ( August 18-29th, Teaneck, NJ): The Rainbow Warriors Youth Theater is a unique performing arts summer program where participants will receive professional training in environmental issues (global warming/climate change, recylcing, air and water pollution and community building) as well as professional training in playwriting, acting, stagecraft (lighting, sounds, costumes, stage management), music and dance. The program will culminate in the creation of an original theatrical presentation. Ages 11-16 only. Contact: rainbow@ethicalfocus.org

Events

• California Sustainability Conference (July 30th- Aug 3rd, CA): Join over 850 students, staff, faculty and administrators in California higher education to explore the ways in which we can implement social, environmental, and economic sustainability on our campuses statewide, prepare future generations for “green collar” jobs, and bring sustainability to campus practices, policies and contemporary culture. We welcome you to present your best practices and learn about innovations in campus operations, planning, design, curriculum, and research through the peer-to-peer network that is being built within the California State University (CSU), California Community College (CCC) and University of California (UC) systems. Contact: kmaynard@geog.ucsb.edu
• Rothbury Festival (July 3-6th, Rothbury, MI): Rothbury is a festival that aims to have minimum impact on our planet, while having a major impact on its people. Rothbury is committed to harnessing the spirit of the music festival community into a durable social movement and is dedicated to running as close to a zero-waste event as possible.
• Sierra Youth Coalition’s “Return to the Tar Sands: 2008 Summer Bike Caravan (August 11th - September 3rd, Edmonton to Calgary, Alberta): The bike trip includes a week of activist training in Edmonton and Fort McMurray, a tour of the toxic tar sands and some of the related industrial development across the province, and actions and events throughout Alberta, as we bike our way from Fort Mac, epicenter of tar sands development, to Calgary, home to many implicated oil companies.
  If you want to know more about the event, or to get involved, please email Marya at tarsands@syc-cjs.org. You can also visit www.tothetarsands.ca to learn about the bike trip, or visit http://www.tarsandstimeout.ca/ to learn more about the tar sands project and it’s global impact.
• Climate Convention/Democratic National Convention (August 25-28th, Denver, CO): As the DNC aims to make the convention waste-free and sustainable, young people from all over the country will gather in Denver to make sure the Democrats get serious about taking action on global warming. Check back for more details on the climate events that we will host during and prior to the convention.
• Republican National Convention (Sept 1-4th, Minneapolis, MN): Coinciding with Labor Day, the RNC provides a great opportunity for injecting the republican discussion with principles of green jobs and building a clean energy economy. There will be plenty of opportunities to get involved, just check back for more details.

Internships/Fellowships

• For information about Summer Internships, Jobs and Fellowships, please check out the Energy Action Coalition Jobs Board.

To submit additional events/programs this summer to this list, please email with the name, dates, location, description, and website/contact info to Juliana at juliana@ssc.org.