The Boston Sustainability Center and Shared Green Roof is a student-designed proposal for a state-of-the-art community green roof where youth and educators from across the city will learn how to think in terms of the world’s interconnected systems. It is an innovative project that combines educational goals, facilities improvements, youth leadership, and community partnerships. The Shared Green Roof will feature outdoor classrooms, a green house, and green technologies designed to promote the big-picture, systems thinking necessary for meeting the issues challenging today’s global community.

Youth, educators and community service groups from more than 20 schools and organizations are working together to advance the project. The project’s creative design and collaborative, youth-led approach have gained a hearing from the Mayor, as well as national and international attention. We need facilities like this, in Boston and beyond. Facilities with the potential to really impact the way we educate and think about our world. The Boston Sustainability Center and Shared green roof has the power to serve as a national model for how facilities paired with meaningful curriculum can inspire the kind of change we want to see in the world.

Problem

Today’s students need their educational experience to prepare them for the future. They need to learn how to engage in the big-picture, systems thinking that will enable them to meet the issues challenging the global community. Such skills will prepare students to make decisions that will impact the sustainability of life on this planet. In cities and towns across the country, citizens and policy makers have begun to address the problem of global climate change. But we still have a long way to go, and some of our policy makers continue to deny that the problem of climate change exists. We need to educate the next generation. The Boston Center for Sustainability, a project started by the next generation - brings together educators, administrators, students, public officials, and youth organizations from all over Boston to help secure an innovative facility for teaching and learning that will engage students across Boston in systems thinking and learning for sustainability.

Solution

BLSYC’s Green Schools Program provides educational opportunities that engage 1,000’s of students annually in service learning and direct action. The Annual Summit serves more than 65 schools, more than 300 youth, and more than 40 educators. The Summer Institutes have trained more than 50 teachers. The Green Jobs program impacted students at 10 different schools, and the Garden camp serves 20 5th graders and their families during the summer. BLSYC anticipates having 400 attendees from more than 80 schools across Greater Boston at the 2012 Summit at MIT. The group's most ambitious project, the proposed Boston Sustainability Center and Shared Green Roof, will provide a powerful tool for integrating education for sustainability across disciplines in Massachusetts. Students and educators from across the city have already been engaged in supporting the proposal for the shared space for innovative teaching and learning.

Example

Now in its 6th year of existence, Boston Latin School Youth Climate Action Network is an after school environmental club at the oldest school in the country. BLS students founded Youth CAN, a coalition of more than 20 member youth groups. BLS Youth CAN (BLSYC) does extensive educational outreach, maintains numerous community partnerships, and organizes free events that serve dozens of schools and community organizations every year. Programs and events include: an Annual Climate Summit at MIT, a summer youth green jobs program, a summer garden camp for younger students, and a statewide education for sustainability campaign with annual teacher trainings, all of which are part of a “Green Schools Program.” The program goals of youth leadership, education for sustainability, facilities improvement, and community partnerships find synthesis in the student’s most ambitious project, “The Boston Sustainability Center”, a student-designed proposal for a state-of-the-art community green roof where students and educators from across the city will learn about sustainability. BLSYC recently formed a task force with youth and educators from over 20 schools, and community service organizations who are working together to advance the project. The project’s innovative design and collaborative youth-led approach have earned a hearing from the Mayor, as well as national and international attention. BLSYC took an all-expenses-paid trip to France in October to present about the project and their partnership model. At the American Embassy in Paris, BLSYC launched an International League of Green Youth Ambassadors. The Youth CAN “Green Schools Program” offers a well-documented model for green schools, green curriculum, green facilities, and green youth leadership and has fostered broad-based alliances within the greater Boston environmental and youth-leadership communities.

Marketplace

This is a unique and singular project that is unlike any other. There are plenty of green roof projects out there, plenty of facilities improvements aimed at improving emissions, building performance, and even education, but there aren't comparable youth-led collaborative projects that are as far reaching in terms of educational goals and engagement of the broader community. The challenges are around moving such a large scale project forward when it is being led by an ever changing team of high school students. There are challenges around funding, development, project management, and outreach. The students have nevertheless been remarkably successful in each of these areas already.