Teen Climate Justice Program!

The Teen Climate Justice Program is an extracurricular program at Sixth Street Community Center, where teens engage around climate justice issues, develop teen-led projects and solutions, and build community power. Our grassroots organizing lens is anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and decolonial. We believe in our young people, and we hope you will, too!

We have big plans for our teen program - but we need your help! With your funding, we will have workshops on: 

Direct action, protest, & climate-related first aid

ARTivism, speculative fiction, & Zine making

Citizen science & air quality monitoring

Public outreach, teach-ins on local EJ movements with youth program (ages 5-11)

Food justice, free produce distribution in LES, & mutual aid meal preparation

Community gardens, guerilla gardening, plant stewardship

1. Reach out to NYC teens! From social media posts to contacting environmental science teachers, we'll make sure plenty of people know about our program. 
2. Enroll our teens in the program! We prioritize global majority, women/nonbinary, and Lower East Side rooted teens for enrollment. 
3. Reach out to our community partners, and plan our workshops and projects! For our summer 2022 program, we may focus on a local stewardship project such as growing edible plants in the raised bed rooftop garden of the Earth School, or creating a native wildflower and pollinator plot at 6BC community garden.

The climate crisis, especially when understood as an intersection of racism and capitalism, is the most urgent issue of our current and future society. 

Teens and young people are grappling with looming questions about what their future will look like. 

As community organizers and educators, it is our responsibility to: 

1. Present candid information about the effects of the climate crisis,

2. Decode how systemic issues created the crisis,

3. Facilitate access to the language, community connections, and skill sets for our teenagers to fight for a better world. 

Sixth Street Community Center is also located in an Environmental Justice area.