This June, Ten Strands celebrated the inaugural cohort of the California Youth Environmental Data (CYED) Leadership Program, a new statewide youth leadership program that gives high school students the opportunity to use data to better understand—and help advance—environmental and climate action in their own school communities.
Launched as a pilot in January 2026, CYED was built around the idea that young people can play an important role not only in advocating for change, but also in helping their school communities understand how much environmental and climate action is already happening, consider where they want to get to, and determine what it would take to accomplish their goals. More than 40 students participated over the course of the six-month program, with 21 students graduating after completing all program requirements.
From Research to Recommendations
Throughout CYED, students learned to wear three different hats: researcher, evaluator, and advisor.
As researchers, students conducted campus observations, interviewed school staff, surveyed peers, reviewed documents, and gathered evidence about environmental and climate action across their school’s campus, curriculum, community, and culture. As evaluators, they used that evidence to determine how deeply environmental and climate action was integrated into their school community. Finally, as advisors, they developed short- and long-term recommendations for what their schools could do next.
As one student reflected: “I learned so much about how to move from research to evaluation, and then to providing well-crafted advisory recommendations. It is important to do all three to be credible!”
Another student captured why beginning with evidence mattered: “I learned how to reach out to people and use my voice, observations, and data to help create a change. I learned that data is not just numbers but also can tell a story. And when you tell that story using data for evidence you are taken more seriously.”
The experience also resulted in measurable student growth. Among graduates, average confidence in conducting field research increased, as did confidence in developing recommendations based on findings. Students also reported gains in their ability to understand local climate issues, identify strengths and gaps in their schools, and communicate their findings and recommendations.
Trends in Findings Across the Cohort
This summer, a team of California Youth Climate Policy (CYCP) Leadership Program alumni interns, Anna Bronk and Luke Choo, analyzed trends across student site assessment reports and recommendations. Their findings and analysis reveal a larger picture of environmental and climate action in California high schools. For example:
- Community and Culture: A recurring strength within school community and culture was the presence of environmentally focused student clubs and leadership opportunities, mentioned in nearly every report (~95 percent), as well as campus events such as Earth Week (~67 percent), which help foster student engagement and awareness. However, students noted that most environmental efforts were being led mainly by students or an individual teacher, and less than 5 percent of students reported having school-level staff with designated responsibilities related to sustainability or environmental and climate literacy.
- Curriculum: While the majority of students noted that environmental education was happening at their school, these opportunities were most commonly offered through science courses and specialized electives, particularly AP Environmental Science. Students identified a need for more consistent integration of environmental literacy across grade levels and subject areas beyond science, with 45 percent expressing a desire to expand teacher professional development and curriculum resources to equip educators with the knowledge and tools needed to support greater cross-curricular integration. CYED students, along with peers who responded to surveys they distributed, also expressed a desire for more experiential learning opportunities, including outdoor learning, hands-on projects, and field trips.
- Campus Facilities and Operations: The strategies schools are implementing for environmental sustainability and climate resilience reflected the greatest amount of variation. Commonly observed initiatives included LED lighting retrofits and solar photovoltaic installations. However, proper waste sorting and diversion remained a common challenge, even at schools with landfill, recycling, and organics bins, with 57 percent of students identifying opportunities to improve waste diversion systems. Nearly 60 percent of students also identified a need to implement or better support school gardens and other outdoor learning environments as intentional spaces for instruction, student calming, and leisure.
Together, these findings not only empower CYED students to identify opportunities for change within their own school communities, but they also provide valuable insights into where future efforts, resources, and investments can be directed to advance environmental literacy and sustainability across all California schools.
Expanding the Ways Young People Create Change
The pilot cohort of CYED demonstrated another important pathway for youth environmental and climate leadership. Young people can advocate for policies that change the systems around them. They can lead projects that create change directly in their communities. And, as CYED students demonstrated, they can conduct research, assess what is happening, and advise their communities about what should happen next.
One student explained the power of evidence in making lasting change: “Assessment is one of the most underrated forms of civic participation. It requires you to show up, pay attention, and produce something that outlasts the moment. A recommendation report doesn’t just express a viewpoint, it creates a record that the next student, teacher, or administrator can build on.”
Another reflected: “When we’re able to demonstrate we made the effort to quantify an issue, and understand our school or district’s priorities, we can more effectively contribute ideas and make our voices heard.”
By the end of the pilot, students described themselves as proud, hopeful, empowered, and more motivated to create change.
- “Now that I have completed the program, I am deeply proud to have been an ambassador for the climate in my community and also to have compiled a detailed report with recommendations that I can present to my school administration. Making change is impossible without hard work. Regarding civic engagement, I am glad I have involved myself in this kind of work and have grown in so many ways as a leader and voice for wanting to make change.” — CYED Cohort 1 Graduate
- “This program significantly expanded my leadership capacity by teaching me how to turn data into objective evidence. Before participating, I thought leadership was primarily about speaking the loudest or organizing events. Now, I understand that effective climate leadership requires data literacy and collaborative thinking. By learning how to analyze school-wide survey metrics and present findings to our faculty and administration, I developed confidence to advocate for structured change.” — CYED Cohort 1 Graduate
- “Prior to joining CYED, I had a lot of beliefs about my school’s current climate action and what my school should be doing better. But without data, those beliefs are just ideas inside my head. The data I collected from observations, interviews, and surveys paints a bigger, more detailed picture of not only the problems, but the potential solutions. I learned that well-organized data is one of the most powerful methods of communication. Data transcends language barriers and can be presented in a way that anyone can understand. In the context of climate change, data indisputably depicts the severity of the crisis, exposes the core causes, and most importantly, lights the path toward sustainable solutions.” — CYED Cohort 1 Graduate
As CYED grows, Ten Strands looks forward to building on what we learned from this first cohort—and continuing to create different pathways for young people to develop the knowledge, skills, and agency to participate meaningfully in environmental and climate action.
Learn more about the CYED program and explore examples of final program deliverables on the CYED site.
