2025 Youth Engagement Impact

•  SVYCA’s 2025 Youth leadership Summit was a resounding success, attended by over 500 attendees, 40 elected officials, and 20 local climate organizations. It was a day of learning, networking and discussion around climate solutions and strategies.

  • More details

• We held our first-ever Youth Leadership Academy in July of 2025. The academy ran for three weeks and trained 30+ aspiring youth leaders everything they need to know about climate change, youth advocacy, community organizing.

  • Blog Post about the student experience

• In early 2025, youth worked with Stanford Health’s, Dr. Lisa Patel to develop videos highlighting the impact of climate change. You can find the videos here along with additional information about climate and health.

• SVYCA’s Green New Year Celebration was an opportunity to highlight the successes of 2024 and outline our plans for continued advocacy into 2025, we heard from the general manager of the Open Space Authority, Andrea Mackenzie, California State Senator Josh Becker, and shared updates on the vision for SVYCA in the new year.

  • Blog Post from Youth Director, Sarah Adkar

• SVYCA members spoke at the American Association For University Women's (AAUW’s) multigenerational climate change event, along with members of Elder Climate Action to share their insights on climate science, climate solutions, and the importance of intergenerational climate conversations with over 100 attendees

  • Student blog post about the event

Previous Youth Engagement Impact

• 2023 Green Bus tours exposed students and education partners to the emerging green jobs and sustainable solutions. We visited several sites as saw cutting-edge solutions at IDEO (a global design and consulting firm), Crissy Field Center, Mindspring (a clean tech company), the City of Sunnyvale’s new net-zero city hall, and Valley Water Advanced Water Purification.

  • You can learn about Burlingame High School student Jayden Wan’s experience here.

• In 2023, five youth leaders, along with then Executive Director Rohan and Co-Founder Hoi, had the opportunity to attend COP28, learn about innovations at international level, and meet key stakeholders from across the world who share same concerns and are working on toward solutions. Our youth leader Diya provides her perspective,

• 2022, Hosted a Youth Climate Summit with over 200 attendees and guest speakers Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese and State Assemblymember Ash Kalra

• Organized a virtual Climate Speaker Series with leaders in the climate and environmental space in 2020 and 2021, bringing together environmentalists from across the spectrum to share their insights, including CEOs, policy advocates, and elected officials such as Congressman Ro Khanna

• Prepared our community members for the November 2020 election by hosting a series of nonpartisan Candidate Forums focused on legislative solutions to global warming and effective policy making to combat our climate crisis

• Created a two-hour climate curriculum for the Fremont Union School District; engaged 8,000+ students, 240+ teachers on climate science, impact, urgency, solutions, careers, civic education and actions

•  collaborations & partnerships

  • Monterey CISC Symposium: Our youth spoke on a keynote panel on the importance of climate education and literacy to 1200+ educators and educational leaders from throughout California. We discussed the importance of civic engagement, climate career pathways, and tangible solutions that administrators and teachers could bring back to their home districts and implement.

  • Partnered with Silicon Valley Youth Climate Strikes to organize the September 2019 strike, a youth-led demonstration that brought together over 2,000 attendees for a march and rally at San Jose City Hall

  • Co-sponsored and emceed the City of Cupertino’s 2021 Earth and Arbor Day Event speaker series

  • Hosted a Youth Climate Action Trivia event as part of the City of Sunnyvale's 2021 Gourmet Earth Week

  • Organized an Earth Day Event in April 2021, co-hosted with the Silicon Valley Democratic Club and the Sunnyvale Democratic Club

  • Partnered with Silicon Valley Biking Coalition to host a “Bike for Boba” event in 2022 where over 70 people came out to bike and learn about the importance of bike lanes

  • Spoke at Senator Cortese’s 2022 Earth Month Town Hall about environmental stewardship and clean energy career pathways

  • Planned, co-sponsored, and presented at a 2022 Environmental Literacy Summit with the Santa Clara County Office of Education