Climate Cardinals: Global Climate Education Platform
Summary
In 2024, Climate Cardinals committed to creating a designated translation portal in partnership with Translators Without Borders to increase the accessibility of climate resources through educational dissemination networks. Building on the momentum of the translation program, Climate Cardinals commits to scaling its impact by doubling its volunteer network to 32,000 by 2025. Three volunteer opportunities: Chapters Program, Ambassadors Program, and Climate Calling, will capitalize on the breadth of Climate Cardinals’ existing volunteer base, maximize dissemination of climate education materials, reaching 11 million individuals across the globe.
Approach
Climate Cardinals commits to creating a designated translation portal in partnership with Translators Without Borders to increase the accessibility of climate resources through educational dissemination networks. Building on the momentum of the translation program, Climate Cardinals commits to scaling its impact by doubling its volunteer network to 32,000 individual contributors by 2025. The organization seeks to leverage global youth networks to empower grassroots climate education and equip everyone, everywhere, to become climate educators. Three volunteer opportunities: Chapters Program, Ambassadors Program, and Climate Calling, will capitalize on the breadth of Climate Cardinals’ existing volunteer base, maximize dissemination of climate education materials, and widely share the numerous climate opportunities that flow through their network.
Through the Chapters Program, youth climate advocates will lead their own chapters of Climate Cardinals, expanding the reach of the organization. The relaunch and expansion of international chapters allows Climate Cardinals to build infrastructure to support grassroots climate education. The program empowers individuals to align climate education with the cultures and perspectives of their communities. Chapter leads will receive support from Climate Cardinals through access to its continuously updated climate curricula, educational videos, toolkits, and other climate content, as well as the opportunity to engage with international climate conferences.
Through the Ambassadors Program, a content dissemination network in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, individuals will become Climate Cardinals Ambassadors: championing climate education in their own communities. Capitalizing on the existing climate education newsletter, Ptera, this program will transform education into action.
Climate Calling will be a centralized hub, launched in partnership with the Eleven Eleven Foundation, hosting opportunities to engage in climate action. The platform’s mission is to provide a homebase for interested youth to search for opportunities from a wide range of types of organizations from local nonprofits to global NGOs.
Action Plan
The translation portal will be complete by the end of 2024. In March 2025, an assessment of the portal will occur with three months of translation data. This will allow both for more direct communication with translation volunteers and more efficient translation, building capacity to expand our network.
Climate Cardinals commits to creating additional content dissemination networks to further expand their volunteer network and active further climate action.
The expanded International Chapters program will relaunch in September 2024. Each Regional President is required to receive approval of their concept note by the Senior Leadership Team in May 2024. Regional Presidents will create Action Plans for their workflows by August 2024 and Impact Reports at the completion of one year of the program. Social media features of Chapter Leaders will foster expansion of the Chapters’ network.
The Ambassadors Program will launch in September 2024, with social media activations to expand the ambassador volunteer base. In November 2024, an evaluation will be conducted for the first two months of the program. Quarterly meetings will take place between Climate Cardinals and The Nature Conservancy. The partnership with TNC will allow us to tap into their network to help reach our goal of doubling our volunteer network.
Climate Calling will launch in November 2024. Phase 1 (April-September) will drive forward the web design, including the development of the public-facing pages of the website and user account registration and profile management, and organization submission. Phase 2 (September-November) will develop the Impact Hub (a resources and tools section of the website for climate activists) , tracking volunteers, and opportunity matching. Phase 3 (November) will release the admin dashboard and creation of a Climate Calling Media Launch Plan. The post-launch check-in will occur in January 2025, when plans and goals will be reassessed.
Background
Cardinals is the world’s largest youth-led climate advocacy organization. The organization recognized an existing language accessibility gap: 80 percent of the global population does not speak English, and yet, 75 percent of scientific information is only in English (Bahji et al., 2023) . Additionally, translation agencies can be very costly, ranging up to $100 per translated page, eliminating this option for many small nonprofits who would like their resources to be equitable.
Climate Cardinals is working to make climate education more accessible to non-English speakers through translations and inclusive climate education programming. Climate Cardinals has shown it can deliver, translating over 2.5 million words of climate information in 100 languages over four years as a coalition of part-time youth volunteers. Climate Cardinals has directly reached over 500,000 individuals and partnered with over 50 organizations. With a proven approach and a dedicated global base of volunteers, their Theory of Change is ready to evolve to its next stage. Climate Cardinals seeks to ensure their translations reach the communities that need them most.
As such, Climate Cardinals is committing to building sustained infrastructure for grassroots climate education programs through empowering youth climate leaders, community engagement, and capacity building. With the added support of Clinton Global Initiative, Climate Cardinals can expand its programming to ensure the long-term durability of translations, ensure community access to these resources, and expand our volunteer network to the millions of youth interested in climate action.
Progress Update
Partnership Opportunities
Climate Cardinals is seeking financial support to ensure the successful launch and longevity of its volunteer initiatives and the scaling of the translation program. The organization recognizes the need for heightened capacity as programs rapidly evolve and the volunteer network grows.
Climate Cardinals seeks to learn best practices for capacity building, as it expands its network to generate more exposure for volunteer programming as well as to gain attention from potential donors. Climate Cardinals would like to have sustained grassroots donations and philanthropic donor opportunities. The organization could also benefit from implementing new content partnerships, such as climate scientists, influencers, or other organizations with a large following.
Climate Cardinals is also seeking topic expertise for technology and infrastructure support. The organization was able to streamline the onboarding of over 100 chapters due to its partnership with Monday.com, and seeks other methods to support its growth through technologies and infrastructure., The Translation Program provides a service to over 30 organizations to ensure language accessibility of climate content, offering translations in 105 languages.
The Chapters program provides grassroots climate education for local communities as well as best practices for launching and leading a climate advocacy organization. Toolkits available on the platform range from “How to host a speaker event” to “Climate Mitigation vs Adaptation.” These resources provide youth climate advocates a diverse toolkit they can employ to educate, engage, and mobilize their communities with.
The Ambassadors program opens up the opportunity for Climate Cardinals to collaborate with The Nature Conservancy for more successful dissemination of climate content relevant to youth by using their expertise to curate to this audience.
Climate Calling will serve as a platform for nonprofits, NGOs, universities, and grassroots organizations to share their own mission, resources, and opportunities with an audience of over 300,000 engaged climate advocates.