Public Lab is excited to work with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Gulf Research Program to build the scientific capacity of the next generation. As one of nine projects selected, Public Lab will be working alongside other inspiring organizations to provide a variety of innovative learning opportunities for children and youth in coastal states including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, and Texas on a broad range of topics pertaining to community resilience and environmental health.

From the press release: "U.S. Gulf Coast communities face a convergence of environmental concerns with distinct social, cultural, economic, political, and regulatory factors that create complex situations many of these communities find themselves challenged to address. For this reason, the Gulf region is both a fitting and important place to foster youth to become civically-minded, scientifically literate members of society engaged in building more resilient communities."

The challenges facing the Gulf Coast will be inherited by youth of today and tomorrow. Inspiring environmentally impassioned youth is essential. In order to do so, we must build and harness students' ability to think about and address environmental stressors.

Our project engages youth in hands-on science learning and practice relevant to their lived experiences, with a community citizen science learning model that positions young people as knowledge producers rather than knowledge consumers. With teacher support, 12- to 18-year-old youth "will lead research projects through all research stages on local environmental topics they have identified as important. Materials developed and refined through the pilot effort will be made available for use by other educators throughout the region."

We've already seen how community citizen science programming can both educate and engage youth to identify environmental concerns, articulate complexities, develop research questions, and implement authentic and multi-faceted approaches engaging such challenges. We are excited by this, and the opportunity to work with educators and the Gulf Research Program to build out programming, and a community of practitioners ready to engage the students of today, and leaders of tomorrow.

To learn more or get involved, please visit https://publiclab.org/wiki/education.

"The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. The Academies operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln."