Support Youth Climate Leadership

BLAST (Building Leadership Around Sustainable Transformation) aims to address local climate-action issues and youth climate anxiety. Climate anxiety has been defined by leading health institutions as distress about our ecological future, particularly as it impacts young people. (Harvard, UNICEF, Lancet) 

“Emerging evidence suggests that young people do best by cultivating a sense of agency and hope despite their climate concerns.” (Harvard Medical School) 

BLAST youth programs are designed to create agency and inspire hope in local students, their schools, and the greater community. High school and college students, working as individuals or in teams, identify a local sustainability or climate issue, prepare data-driven research, and propose and undertake actionable solutions. The program models a cooperative, investigative approach that connects STEAM educational disciplines to civic, business, and natural models for problem solving. Student volunteers and interns helped design the initial structure of the BLAST program, demonstrating the organization’s commitment to a needs-driven approach.

During the school year, BLAST sponsors a competition in which students, together with adult mentors, design and develop projects, including a written proposal and an oral pitch, which are judged by a panel of volunteers from civic, business, and science-based backgrounds. Projects are evaluated on scientific soundness and practicality for implementation. 

The BLAST program continues to offer learning opportunities to students during the summer following the competition. Competition participants and other interested students are invited to apply to paid summer internship positions and additional volunteer positions. Along with support from staff and paid college interns, students will continue to deploy solutions for projects resulting from the competition, as well as projects that support ACS’s broader mission.

All students involved in the summer program also participate in civic engagement, including meeting with elected officials, making public comments at government meetings, and presenting to community organizations.

Thank you for supporting our community's young environmental leaders!

If your corporation or foundation would like to be a BLAST sponsor, please visit this page for sponsorship benefits.

If you would prefer to donate by check, please mail to 34 W. Chicago Ave., Suite A, Naperville, IL 60540.