October 28th, 2024
Kathleen Gray, Diana Urieta, and Sarah Yelton share about their project: Youth Engaging in the Science of Resilience: Sensing the Environment and Envisioning Solutions (NSF #2215420).
“We’re really engaging [youths] and together thinking about how these issues are occurring in their communities and how they can be part of the solution. That’s the big goal.”
What is your project’s big idea?
Kathleen Gray: Sarah and I had a pilot project and feasibility study grant from AISL with our colleague Dana Haine, where we were working with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and doing similar work, really thinking about how to implement informal science programming, to engage diverse youth in climate resilience. We had a successful pilot that we looked to expand and wanted to engage even more diverse youth. We looked around North Carolina to identify other partners who were successfully engaging diverse youth, and that led to our initial partnership with Juntos.
Diana Urieta: Sarah and Kathleen have taken time to build trust through our conversations since starting this project. They took time to learn our program’s mission and foundation as a pathways program that focuses on the family and not just the student learner.
For Juntos, there was excitement around the expertise in environmental science this project brought, which we wanted our young people to have access to. Based on programming in North Carolina and our structured summer academy at NC State University, it was a win to bring this environmental science project to our youth.
Sarah Yelton: The AISL Innovations in Development award grew naturally out of the AISL pilot project, where we were looking at the experiences of rural and urban youth with local climate impacts and thinking broadly about what that meant. In this new collaboration, we wanted to see how we could bring climate issues home to all of the youth that we work with and have them think about what’s happening in their communities and how they can have a positive impact there.
How did this partnership begin?
Kathleen: We were introduced to Juntos by mutual collaborators at North Carolina State University, which is a Land Grant institution and has a cooperative extension network. Juntos is part of the cooperative extension infrastructure. Juntos feels like a community organization because it is embedded in communities across our state and has county coordinators who work with youth. Juntos is very different from an academic research and service center: It works on the ground and functions much more like a community-based organization.
Diana: Juntos is like a nonprofit within this large university. Most of our funding comes from foundations and grants. We have a 17-year program history of positive impact on our students and their families. Juntos is built on seeing a community’s culture and language as an asset, and that has drawn interest from the academic community. It’s been partners who have grabbed onto our mission that has allowed the program to scale and evolve. It’s been an honor to watch Juntos sites graduate 100% of their high school seniors, and the majority pursuing higher education for the past six years.
It’s been a lot of work over the years, but we haven’t done it alone, and we can’t do it alone. Along with Extension, we have partnered with many different folks. Juntos’ impact and partnerships have led us to become a national program.
Kathleen: That really comes back to the beauty of the partnership. Juntos is authentically engaging Latino youth and families and helping them envision a new trajectory for education. Then, we are this robust environmental science and environmental health education unit that also leads community engaged research. We each brought these strengths to the table, and together, we are doing things that neither of us was doing or could do in the same way when we weren’t partnering.
What are you hoping to achieve from this partnership?
“For our young people to go through that journey and identify as scientists, no matter their chosen career, that’s a win even beyond this project. I think about building leadership and ownership among our students, which will create an opportunity for them to engage in spaces where they may not feel they belong. They’re going to be able to say, ‘I had these experiences. And I have this knowledge.'”
Kathleen: Our goal with “Youth Engaging in the Science of Resilience” is to get young people who may not already be engaged in environmental science and environmental health research thinking about climate change, climate impacts in their communities, and really helping them begin to think about the solutions and how they can contribute to developing these solutions. It’s meeting young people where they are. Sometimes, it’s introducing science to them that they are unfamiliar with, or sometimes, it’s exploring how their lived experience tells them about the science, if they haven’t had the classes yet.
We’re really engaging them and together thinking about how these issues are occurring in their communities and how they can be part of the solution. That’s the big goal.
Sarah: From a research perspective, we’re looking at how exposing youth to climate resilience, to having them think about solutions and being part of solutions, moves them along a continuum of environmental health literacy. That goes to understanding what the problems are, having the skills to investigate them, and think of those solutions, and then to be able to take action, whether it’s at an individual level or community level.
We’re also learning how we all work together, how universities support communities, how these partnerships work, and what collaboration looks like. It’s taken us a while to figure it out, but we want to share how we make all of this work. It’s a really complex project.
Diana: Part of the Juntos work is providing access to experiences for our young people to identify with science and see it for what it is for them, not just what other people tell them. For our young people to go through that journey and identify as scientists, no matter their chosen career, that’s a win even beyond this project. I think about building leadership and ownership among our students, which will create an opportunity for them to engage in spaces where they may not feel they belong. They’re going to be able to say, “I had these experiences. And I have this knowledge.” Walking through this project has given me a lot of relief that we made the right decision in the collaboration. So, for us and Juntos, we’re focusing on career pathways and giving our young people different experiences. Environmental science has broad access to other career paths, and our population is not always aware of them. And so that’s a problem that we need to solve.
Kathleen: Yeah. And I thought it was really powerful this past summer. Will Vizuete, a Latino professor and air quality researcher, is one of our colleagues at UNC Chapel Hill. He participated in Juntos Summer Academy. And he just gave such an impactful introduction to air quality science, talking about how Latino populations are among those who are most impacted by poor air quality. Yet, they may have less access to the careers that solve those problems. And I think that the health lens was interesting to the youth and to Juntos. Really thinking about the health aspects of these environmental challenges both opens doors and shows relevance.
How did you build trust with the community members that you worked with?
“Things constantly change, and being able to learn from and with each other at the same time has been really powerful for me, especially when we think about what something similar being done across the country might look like.”
Diana: We were open from the beginning and had to have hard conversations about the work that needed to be done. It’s important to have the freedom to have these conversations and bring in other team members who are even more connected to the community, like Juntos coordinators who work directly with the students and families. The Juntos county coordinators are engaged in conversations and are mindful of the community’s realities. We ask questions like: Is this session or lesson going to work how it was written? We think about how we will work through that, knowing that we’re in rural and urban North Carolina, which have very different needs.
It’s complicated, but that’s why the work needs to continue. We must be mindful of the research we can show at the end of this project, but we must also know that there’s even more work that we can do beyond this project.
Things constantly change, and being able to learn from and with each other at the same time has been really powerful for me, especially when we think about what something similar being done across the country might look like. For example, when you’re trying to do this in a rural county, whether it’s with just a few people or 80 people, you know, giving advice to make it more relevant. “Here are things that we’ve thought about or that you might want to think about as we’re trying to make these activities or programs more relevant to varied communities.” And it’s been a great learning experience, I think, having those tough but honest conversations.
Kathleen: I think we built trust. Diana and I took calculated risks in our first year of knowing each other. She allowed us in and allowed us access to youth in her program the year leading up to this grant. We showed up and did amazing things with them. And if she hadn’t given us access, and if we hadn’t put our all into it, the foundation of everything that Diana and Sarah just talked about, such as having ongoing hard conversations, wouldn’t have worked. We don’t ignore feedback. We respond to it, try something else, and have an ongoing dialogue that continues to build trust.
I think we’ve built a strong partnership by showing up for each other and bringing everything we have to the table.
What impacts do you hope your project has in the community it serves and in the informal science education field?
“Once you see the kids, it’s hard not to want to do it again. How do we produce that contagious drive to continue the work?”
Sarah: I am excited about the opportunity to bring people into environmental science and environmental health in ways they might not otherwise be exposed to. To have access to the scientists, the community leaders, and the potential solutions already in their communities. They just need to figure out what solutions are possible and maybe get some help. That is a place where I hope that we will have an impact on the youth that we are working with.
We are already having an organizational impact. What I see as really important is how we are all learning and growing together, and I want to be able to share that with others who can learn from the things that went really well and the more challenging things that we’ve done. So that would be a couple of the impacts, I hope, that come out of this project.
Diana: I’m always thinking about how this is sustainable. We have funding and staffing right now, but that may not be the case when the funding is gone, so we will really be thinking about what that looks like for the next stage of this project.
For example, we’re developing collaborations because of the universities we’re in. We talked earlier about a professor who is passionate about this work and that he will probably want to do it next year during the Summer Academy. Once you see the kids, it’s hard not to want to do it again. How do we produce that contagious drive to continue the work? The next stage for us is really to think through that mindfully.
“This intergenerational impact needs to be captured better. The parents get to learn about science through the young people, and the parents love that because they see their kids presenting.”
Two Juntos groups got first and second place in that poster competition, and the first place group was a group of students who do not speak English. I love the fact that we were able, with Juntos and with those undergraduate leaders and the staff, to create something so engaging that non-English speakers could communicate what they learned and did at the level that would be recognized with a first place award! I hold that in my mind and say “so much is possible when we collaborate and give access to education and engage youth with learning and transformation in mind.” That impact excites me about this program.
Diana: Because we focus on also serving the families, the program allows us to engage in the work with the adults who are also learners and the siblings who accompany the whole family. This intergenerational impact needs to be captured better. The parents get to learn about science through the young people, and the parents love that because they see their kids presenting, which is not unique to just this population.
Other populations can also benefit from this practice. I always say, especially when asked, “Well, why do you have a program just for this particular population?” First, we open the doors to anyone who wants to join Juntos, and we’ve had youth with other identities participate. Second, the research and impact that’s happening within this program will also benefit other communities, if not all communities.
Kathleen: During Summer Academy, poster judges were going around and talking to youth, but it wasn’t like an academic poster session. It was like a family sharing session. The youth were so excited to pull out the sensors they used to measure air quality and to show how to use them. I saw multiple youth connecting to phones and demonstrating sensor use to family members, and they also built box-fan filters. They tried different filter configurations that could be used indoors, to reduce exposure to air pollution from wildfire smoke. They were homemade, with bought components including fans and filters, and they explained their filter prototypes to their families. We ran out of a fact sheet on how to build the filters because the youth were sharing it, and so many people wanted to take a copy. There was so much happening; it was more than just youth learning about environmental science. They were sharing their knowledge, leaning into leadership, and beginning to see how science can help us solve real problems associated with climate impacts.