The Rutgers Department of 4-H Youth Development and the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve (JCNERR) have launched a multi-year initiative designed to engage New Jersey educators, students, and community partners in climate resilience planning and action.
The project is part of EduCATE (Education, Climate Awareness, Training, and Engagement), a program within New Jersey’s broader Building a Climate Ready NJ initiative. Through the project, educators, students in grades 6–12, and community partners from cities across the state will form Resiliency Action Teams to explore local climate challenges and develop community-based solutions.
Youth participants will build a shared understanding of climate risks using both scientific data and lived experiences. The initiative aims to empower youth to identify priorities in their communities and take an active role in advancing resilience strategies.
“With this project, we hope to build a statewide cohort that centers our NJ youth and is co-led by the students themselves, as well as educators and community leaders,” said RCEI affiliate Janice McDonnell, associate dean for research impact at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and a co-principal investigator on the grant.
The initiative supports EduCATE’s broader mission to expand climate resilience education, training, and community engagement across New Jersey while advancing the goals of Building a Climate Ready NJ.
As members of the Resiliency Action Teams, youths will develop skills in data collection and observation, communication, teamwork, project planning and implementation. At the conclusion of the EduCATE program year, participants will present their projects at Rutgers. The Department of 4-H Youth Development had previously facilitated a similar concept in a workshop in partnership with the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center; Rutgers Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education; Rutgers Center for Ocean Observing Leadership; Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute; Rutgers Cooperative Extension and the Rutgers Science Explorer Program.
The inaugural cohort of the EduCATE program includes Academy I Middle School (Jersey City), Infinity Institute (Jersey City), Lincoln Middle School (Kearny), Newark School of Data Science and Information Technology (Newark), Union Hill Middle School (Union City), and William L. Dickinson High School (Jersey City). The project will officially kick off in July 2026. Learn more about this initiative on the 4-H STEM website.
This effort is part of Building a Climate Ready NJ, a resilience initiative of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This article was originally published by SEBS/NJAES Newsroom.
