Youth Outreach and Education
The Air District is committed to supporting science-based education and innovative youth-related programs that help youth better understand the importance of clean air to our health and the health of our climate.
Speakers Bureau
Air District staff will be happy to come to your school and talk to students about air quality and public and climate health. As a part of our speakers’ bureau Air District staff works with teachers to design presentations that will fit with the curriculum being taught at the time of the presentation. Better yet, we come directly to you!
Protect Your Climate Curriculum
The Air District has designed and piloted the first comprehensive climate change curriculum in California. Protect Your Climate includes 16 lessons for 4th and 5th grade students that focus on air pollution, energy, waste reduction and transportation. The curriculum addresses California educational standards for physical, earth and life sciences, mathematical reasoning, investigation and experimentation, visual and language arts, reading comprehension and history and social science.
The curriculum is available for download at no cost.
Cool the Earth
In order to promote behavior change in the classroom and in students’ homes the Air District has sponsored Cool the Earth – a green house gas reduction program for K-8th grade students and their parents. The Air District is currently supporting the presence of Cool the Earth in 25 Bay Area Schools. Nationally, Cool the Earth is run in over 155 schools, reaches approximately 54,000 students and has resulted in an estimated 91,350,000 lbs of carbon saved.
For more information about the program visit Cool the Earth.
Regional Climate Initiatives School and Youth Outreach Effort
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to school and youth programs that focus on the impacts of climate change, while also teaching behaviors to reduce GHG emissions. One example of such a program, Safe Routes to Schools, has combined infrastructure investments with communications programs to decrease traffic and pollution, and improve the health of children and the community as a whole. Other programs include extra-curricular activities that educate, inspire and mobilize youth on climate-related issues in order to encourage short- and long-term behavior change.
The Air District and its partners, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), are currently developing a school and youth outreach program to assure climate education is available to all students in the Bay Area.
The purpose of the Regional School and Youth Outreach Program is to:
• Reduce emissions of GHGs and criteria pollutants;
• Educate, inspire and empower youth and their families to make transportation-related behavior changes that reduce GHG emissions and vehicle miles traveled;
• Impart the knowledge and skills to youth and their families that will lead to the greatest reduction in GHG emissions in the long term; and
• Provide elements that empower the individual and remove barriers to behavior change.