TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE EDUCATION
Start:Empowerment brings climate and social-environmental justice education to to over 24 schools and 3,770 students and counting across the United States (including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Nevada, Texas, California, Michigan, Massachusetts, and more).
With deep ties to grassroots organizations, frontline communities, and Indigenous leaders, we form powerful partnerships with educators, schools, and nonprofits.
Our adaptable curricula and partnership models are tailored to meet the unique needs of local schools and equip youth and communities of color with green job skills, catalyzing improvements in learning outcomes and fostering the next generation of climate advocates.
Our Unique Approach
We employ a critical consciousness framework to co-create programming alongside youth, educators, activists, and community members, ensuring environmental justice education resonates deeply within public schools. Our curriculum prioritizes long-term education, improved learning outcome, civic engagement, and environmental empowerment, resulting in student-led projects ranging from policy advocacy to school gardens.
Teacher Cohort
We are working with 15 teachers that are leading the implementation of our environmental justice curriculum in their classroom, we provide stipends, collaborate with teachers to write new lessons, help coordinate field trips, they are giving us feedback to strengthen our curriculum.
Application for our next cohort coming summer 2025!
After School Programming
Whether it's running a food justice program for elementary school students in queens with the connected chef or a middle school environmental justice education cohort in las vegas nevada with our partner CORE or building a corn garden at an elementary school in east austin we invest in creating powerful after school programming for BIPOC youth.
Summer Youth Employment Program
Since the summer of 2023 we've provided a 6 weeks paid green summer internship for 68 Black and Brown high school students from the Bronx in partnership with NYC gov and CAWS. We have worked on environmental justice campaigns to build civic engagement, advocacy, critical analyses, and green jobs/career skills. We look forward to expanding our programming to other boroughs in summer 2025.
Work, Learn, and Grow Program
For 6 months of the year, 16-17 year old students attend college courses for credit and receive a paid internship with Start:Empowerment to build skills in their interest areas (media, advocacy, activism, organizing, campaign-building, and more!)