Climate Policy Researcher for Youth Advocacy Dashboard

We'd like to connect with a skilled volunteer researcher to conduct policy landscape research on a prioritized group of 5–8 climate solution topics. For each topic, the volunteer will research national, regional, and international policy and legislative frameworks, identify organizations working in the space and relevant professional roles, and prepare a concise research summary. Each summary should be written in clear, accessible language for audiences ages 8 and up and explain how the solution applies across different levels of government, including local, state, federal, international, and judicial frameworks.

This research will serve as the foundation for a policy dashboard supporting our near- and long-term climate initiatives in partnership with Clean Earth Future, which uses a board game to help people understand climate solutions and meaningful ways to advocate for them.

Climate House is a creative think tank and forthcoming climate museum that uses arts, culture, and policy strategy to "stage solutions and bring them to life" and build cultural momentum for climate action. This Project will help us establish a strong research foundation as we prepare to launch our organization and share these resources with the public.

Our organization focuses on developing interactive cultural programs and opportunities for systems-level policy transformations. By working with our partner organization to develop our first phase policy dashboard for this climate board game, we can build a solid foundation of policy frameworks to use in our program and test them in conversation, while creating conditions for new audiences to orient toward policy-level solutions. This will also allow us to test-run different approaches to integrating policy amplification across audiences, including at the student and educator levels.

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Climate Cooldown isn't just a board game. It is also a comprehensive climate curriculum for anyone ages 8 and up. A critical part of what makes the game so great is its capability to reach learners in a fun and friendly way, while also covering over 70 unique and salient topics related to climate change. In collaboration with Climate House, the game studio Clean Earth Future envisions developing advocacy-centered resources for all of these topics, such as “Reforestation” or “Single-use Plastics Ban,” that will help students and players in general get access to pathways towards community engagement, climate advocacy, and civic action.

As it stands, Clean Earth Future has provided a large host of useful information, such as definitions of terms, relevant sustainable development goals, and pathways for academia and careers for all topics covered in the game. This next step will offer an incredibly important aspect to each topic: how we can advocate for these solutions, or solutions to the problems addressed in the game (termed “disasters”). Providing this information will help students and players alike become informed about the ways in which they can become involved with existing efforts, movements, policies, organizations, coalitions, frameworks, and models. No need to “reinvent the wheel”. Providing these resources will get them started on their quests towards climate justice. Displayed freely online, these resources will improve the accessibility and efficacy of climate literacy for generations to come for schools, households, and participants in Climate House events.

Volunteers will be guided by myself and our partner lead Thomas Yount, to coordinate research and delivery of findings, starting with an introductory call. Our partner will share visual tools currently in use to demonstrate where this will live on their end. This information will be used by our organization to frontload our programs and our program pipeline with systems-level policy solutions that can be spread across audiences, including at the student level where discussions around policy are often isolating, abstract, and lack opportunities for real engagement.