Youth Environmental Alliance in Higher Education

The YEAH partnership started in the summer of 2019 with a joint class held by several institutions who designed an online module-based class on the sustainable development goals. Students worked in teams with their peer colleagues from different campuses to choose topics and address metrics around a sustainable development goal. For example, one team chose SDG2 on Zero Hunger and explored the issue of food insecurity among the different campuses. Within the USA, a significant percentage of students--both undergraduate and graduate--are food insecure and have difficulty accessing resources. This SDG study highlighted this common issue among academic institutions that has largely been over looked within the USA. Student teams presented at the Conference of the Parties (COP) in several venues including the US DESA Pavilion, press conferences and side events. The experience provided to the students was critical to get the youth enagaged especially those within the USA. The YEAH partnership has grown to include institutions from four countries and students present their work at a global virtual conference in advance of the COP as well as at the COP itself. Student learning and progress is monitoring through a series of assessment tools common in higher education institutions including learning assessments, evaluations of products (from student teams) and surveys on student engagement. The focus on the YEAH network is on students already enrolled in higher education; however students often choose projects that work with communities or other outlets as part of their YEAH experience.