Supporting young climate leaders, strengthening children’s voices and helping move climate education from local “Bright Spots” to global policy
The ChariTree Foundation’s executive director, Andrea Koehle Jones, serves as an advisor to the UNICEF Innocenti Youth Fellowship on Climate Education, a groundbreaking global initiative that brings children and young people into efforts to rethink how the world teaches, understands, and responds to climate change.
“Children are the most impacted and least to blame for the climate crisis. We have a unique moment in history to champion environmental education for a global generation of children growing up in a world accelerating toward runaway climate change, and to ensure they are equipped with meaningful biodiversity and climate education, opportunities to participate, and a genuine voice in shaping climate solutions.”
— Andrea Koehle Jones, children’s climate education advocate
She brings more than 20 years of hands-on experience in children’s environmental education, grassroots climate action and building programs that help young people connect with nature and believe in their ability to make a difference. She is also a co-founder of The FirstLine Foundation, which is partnering with UNICEF on this project to advance child-focused climate action, strengthen the role of climate and environmental education in UN processes and climate planning, and help ensure the meaningful representation of children and young people in shaping climate policy and solutions.
A global Fellowship built around young people and their ideas
The UNICEF Innocenti Youth Fellowship on Climate Education is an 18-month program running through 2027 that brings together young leaders working on promising climate education initiatives.
At the centre of the Fellowship are what UNICEF calls “Bright Spots”, youth-led or youth-centred initiatives that demonstrate how climate education can work in real communities.
Rather than treating young people simply as participants or beneficiaries, the Fellowship gives them opportunities to develop their initiatives, contribute to research and foresight, learn from experts and one another, and bring their experience into conversations with policymakers and global decision-makers.
Selected Bright Spots can receive significant implementation support, helping young leaders move promising ideas from local action toward broader and potentially lasting impact.
The extraordinary response to the Fellowship demonstrates how strongly young people want opportunities not only to learn about climate change, but to help shape what happens next. More than 18,800 young people from 163 countries applied to the program.
From local Bright Spots to systems change
What makes this Fellowship particularly exciting is its potential to connect youth grassroots action with global decision-making.
Young people around the world are already creating innovative approaches to climate and environmental education in schools, communities, outdoor spaces and youth networks. Yet many of these initiatives remain isolated, underfunded or disconnected from the institutions shaping education and climate policy.
The Fellowship has an opportunity to identify what is already working, help young leaders strengthen those ideas and bring their experiences into larger conversations about education, children’s rights and climate action.
That means helping move climate education beyond individual programs and toward something much bigger: recognition that children need access to meaningful climate and environmental education as part of preparing them for the world they are inheriting.
Andrea Koehle Jones and the Climate Education Advisory Group
Andrea serves as a member of the Fellowship’s international Climate Education Advisory Group, an intergenerational group bringing together expertise in climate education, children’s rights, youth leadership, research and global policy.
As an advisor, Andrea works directly with the UNICEF team supporting the Fellowship and contributes the perspective of someone who has spent two decades building environmental education initiatives from the ground up.
That practical experience matters.
Andrea understands many of the challenges young environmental leaders encounter when trying to turn an idea into something sustainable: finding resources, building trusted partnerships, reaching children and communities, communicating impact and navigating the difficult transition from a promising local initiative to something capable of creating broader change.
ChariTree: a 20-year “Bright Spot”
The ChariTree Foundation is itself a real-world example of the kind of locally rooted “Bright Spot” the Fellowship is designed to identify, strengthen and scale.
ChariTree began with local tree-planting activities for children in Canada. Over the past 20 years, that simple idea has grown into a United Nations Climate Observer organization, supporting environmental education initiatives and helping to create outdoor classrooms for children around the world.
What began with children planting trees has evolved into a broader effort to give young people meaningful opportunities to learn from nature, understand environmental change and discover that their own actions matter.
Through tree planting, outdoor learning and environmental education, ChariTree works to educate, empower and grow hope for children and young people growing up in an accelerating and ever-changing world.
That journey gives Andrea a particularly personal connection to the Fellowship’s Bright Spots.
Twenty years ago, ChariTree was itself a small environmental idea rooted in local action. Today, the lessons learned from building that work can help inform and encourage a new generation of young people developing their own climate education initiatives.
Children as partners in shaping the climate future
Climate education needs to be about more than explaining the science of climate change.
It should help children understand the natural world, think critically about the challenges around them, participate meaningfully in decisions and develop the confidence to imagine and create solutions.
Children and young people will live longest with the consequences of today’s climate decisions. Their experiences, ideas and perspectives need to be represented not only in classrooms but also in the institutions and policy processes that determine what climate action looks like.
The Fellowship offers an important opportunity to strengthen that representation.
By connecting young people’s lived experience and grassroots innovation with UNICEF’s research, convening power and global policy work, the program can help elevate climate education within UN discussions, national climate planning and wider conversations about children’s rights and the future of education.
Growing hope through climate education
The climate crisis can easily leave children feeling that the problems facing their generation are too large to influence.
Climate education can offer something different.
When children are given knowledge, meaningful experiences in nature, opportunities to participate and the ability to see their ideas taken seriously, education can become a source of agency rather than anxiety.
That is why this work matters.
By continuing to partner with UNICEF on this groundbreaking project, The First Line Foundation and Andrea Koehle Jones have an opportunity to help advance child-focused climate action, strengthen the role of climate and environmental education in UN processes and climate planning, and ensure the meaningful representation of children and young people in shaping climate policy and solutions, while expanding the Fellowship’s reach and influence through the end of 2027.
For ChariTree, it is also a continuation of a journey that began 20 years ago with a simple idea: give children a chance to plant something, learn from the natural world and discover that they can help create change.
Learn more
Explore the UNICEF Innocenti Youth Fellowship on Climate Education