Be The Change Earth Alliance is proud to partner with UBC Sustainability to offer our Youth Climate Ambassador Program (YCAP) and encourage students to take meaningful collective action in their communities. These workshops are facilitated by trained UBC Sustainability Ambassadors, who can relate to and engage with secondary school students. YCAP uses a by youth, for youth model to make climate education engaging and inspiring.
This workshop explores climate justice through a climate storytelling lens. Students gain tools, skills, and practices to become effective communicators, active citizens, and confident “Climate Ambassadors”. By empowering students to act and demonstrating how effective their actions can be, we help students see how their contributions truly matter in the climate movement.
Workshop Objectives
- Provide participants with hope and agency through compelling, powerful, and inspiring stories
- Affirm participants’ experiences and feelings about climate change
- Help participants understand climate change as a social justice issue, not just an environmental crisis
- Give participants the tools and frameworks to be effective climate activists and communicators
- Spark participants’ imaginations of effective strategies to inspire others to support climate solutions, policies, and action
Workshop Content
We offer two versions of this workshop:
1. YCAP: Original Workshop
Recommended ages: Grades 5-12
This workshop empowers students to explore climate change and justice through storytelling, discussions, and creative reflection. Students will dive into climate issues, hear from their classmates' lived experiences, and learn how to share their own climate story. Centred on interactive teaching methods, this workshop sparks hope and encourages meaningful community-based change.
2. YCAP: Climate Justice Workshop
Recommended ages: Grades 8-12
This workshop takes a deeper look into climate justice and environmental racism through reflective and inclusive discussions. Students will participate in a case study analysis on a real-world proposed motion to make False Creek in Vancouver, BC, a Marine Protected Area. Classes will learn about how inequities are faced by frontline communities in the climate crisis and how to create meaningful change by sharing their own climate stories.
YCAP workshops can take place in classrooms, after school, in the community, or online. In-person workshops are available in the Metro Vancouver region. The recommended length of this workshop is 60-90 minutes. The original workshop is geared for Grades 5-12, but the adapted ‘Climate Justice’ version can be delivered for students in post-secondary.
Be The Change Earth Alliance and UBC Sustainability are grateful to be a 2025 recipient of the UBC Community University Engagement Support (CUES) Fund, which generously supports this initiative.