The Northeast Ohio Youth Climate Summit
The author is a Junior at Laurel School in Ohio.
As students flowed through the doors of the Cleveland Public Library for the Northeast Ohio Youth Climate Summit many stopped to do an interview concerning their exposure to climate change and issues related to environmental justice. “I’ve heard people talk about it but I’ve never had a firsthand experience,” answered one student from St. Martin de Porres in Cleveland. Students rated their understanding of climate change on a scale from 1-10 with many rating their knowledge between a 3 and 5. These numbers would change throughout the day as students attended breakout sessions, listened to speeches, and walked around the environmental opportunities fair.
The summit, held Friday, April 11, 2025, began in the morning with welcoming remarks led by students from Laurel School. This was followed by a presentation by Cate Henning from the Climate Reality Project about the science of climate change. The presentation emphasized the responsibility that corporations bear for the extreme climate change caused by their harmful actions, a theme echoed across breakout sessions.
The morning session ended with a keynote speech by Sage Lenier, a world renowned climate educator known for a climate course she taught at UC Berkeley at nineteen years old. Lenier gave an engaging speech about her experience as a young adult teaching other students at her school, and how it felt when every year interest in her course continued to grow. For her, it highlighted the need for education on climate change and the keenness that students have to learn about it.
Sage Lenier, a world renowned climate educator; provided photo.
Students then split off into breakout sessions led by students from schools across Northeast Ohio such as John Marshall School of Engineering, Beaumont School, Gilmour Academy, Saint Joseph Academy, Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School, and Laurel School. Topics ranged from the effects of climate change on human health to the importance of green spaces in cities. Many breakout sessions focused on local issues such as the impact that sewer systems have on surrounding communities in Northeast Ohio, and the effect that local incinerators can have on human health. Students learned about many topics related to climate change and environmental justice.
Breakout sessions included numerous interactive activities; provided photo.
By the end of the day, many students rated their understanding of climate change and environmental justice as much higher than before. Many students expressed interest in doing environmental justice work in their own communities, such as composting, protesting, and writing letters to their decision-making representatives. Many students spoke about how the knowledge they gained at the summit inspired them to want to take action. Several students applied for mini-grants from Global Shapers in order to enact change in their schools and broader community. Global Shapers is an organization that spans across the globe and works with the youth in order to uplift their voices and help them take action on issues they care about. After the summit many students applied for the grant in hopes that they would be able to fund programs that would support and empower their school communities. Recognizing the rise of fast fashion among teens, one of the grant recipients decided to make their project all about making use of old fabric that is considered unusable. They plan to use the grant to invest in secondhand sewing machines with the intention of using them to upcycle all types of used fabrics in order to give them a second life.
While the NEO Youth Climate summit exists primarily as a space to educate students on climate change and environmental justice, one of the main goals is to inspire collective action amongst the youth. By creating this space by the youth and for the youth, the many students who came together to create this summit have laid the groundwork for their fellow peers to take action on what they care about. The students who created the first NEO Youth Climate Summit in 2024 spoke about how inspirational it was “to see the NEO Youth Climate Summit expand and evolve” from one hundred students registering in 2024 to more than 300 registering this year — with many more being on the waitlist. The planning team for this event also grew from being primarily made of Laurel students to being made up of students from schools across the Northeast of Ohio. Many of the seniors who started the NEO Youth Climate discussed their hope for the future of this summit. Already there are talks to expand the hosting capacity for next year in order to welcome more bright minds into the movement for climate justice.
At the end of the 2025 summit the student planners highlighted being able to reach more people as one of their main goals for the next school year and for the next summit. Because of the high demand for students to attend the summit, the NEO Youth Climate Summit was unable to host middle school students at the summit this year, but next year there are plans already forming to not only include students in middle school but work on making guaranteed spaces for them. As the attendees learned from Sage Lenier this year, education is extremely important and by making access to it ensured, these planners are fulfilling their goal of building upon this groundwork they have laid.
As school rolls back into session the planning team for the Northeast Ohio Youth Climate Summit is gearing up for another year of hard work with one sole goal, to build upon what they have and make the summit even better than it was. Last year lots of people and organizations thoroughly conveyed their support for the work that the planning committee puts in every year in order to make the NEO Youth Climate Summit a reality. With their support the committee is now able to make their hopes for the future of the NEO Youth Climate Summit a reality.
For example, plans are already underway to expand the reach the summit has by booking larger venues, hosting longer breakout sessions and more in order to ensure that all that are interested are able to attend. The committee also hopes to create more specialized events within the summit for students in younger grades. With the aid they have received, student planners are working on creating more avenues for middle schoolers to take part in these important conversations because they recognize that it is crucial that every student gets a chance to learn about these important topics.
Another plan already in motion for the upcoming year is to bring in more student presenters as opposed to strictly organizations or adults. All of the recipients of the 2025 mini-grants supplied by Global Shapers have agreed that at the next summit they will present about their projects they have created in hopes of inspiring others to apply and put the same effort into their communities that they did. The recipients of these grants are hard at work on their projects, whether it involves sewing news clothes or sowing seeds in a garden. They can not wait to bring their work to their fellow students and show all the change that they too can bring to their communities. On account of the success of the grants offered by Global Shapers, the NEO Climate Summit committee expects to work with them again in order to expand on the recipients so that more students have the opportunity to create much needed projects in their cities.
As can be seen in the news and by observing the world in general, climate change is not going away. The world that the youth of today will be inheriting looks bleak and to many, does not look like it has much of a future. This is why the work that is being done by the student planners of the student planners of the Northeast Ohio Youth Climate Summit is so important because they are working towards changing that mindset and to change the future. By creating this space in which teens can learn from one another about climate change they are helping to inspire changemakers who will inherit the Earth not with a sense of doom, but with a belief that they can fix what has been broken and right what has been wronged.
For more info or to learn how you can get involved in next year’s summit, email info@neoycs.org
