“Few if any calendars make note of it, and Hallmark has no greeting card for it, but February is National Youth Leadership Month.”
If that sentence seems familiar, it’s because
we posted it last year as part of the promotion behind the inaugural SCA Convening on Youth Co-Powerment. Scheduled for mid-March in Washington, D.C., the event was first moved to a virtual platform before being cancelled outright due to the mounting coronavirus pandemic.
One year later, many of us are still working remotely, Zoom is as routine as turning on the coffee maker – and the Convening is back!
On Wednesday and Thursday, February 17 and 18, SCA will host more than 80 accomplished and influential visionaries in conservation, environmental justice, equality, and youth development to explore how we can best co-power inclusive groups of young change-makers to act on climate issues and other critical conservation priorities.
The online Convening will highlight keynotes from partners at Ecoinclusive, ThinkOcean, Zero Hour, and others, and feature presentations from an SCA Pittsburgh high school intern team. Our intention is to build new collaborative relationships, new foundations for impact, and new opportunities for youth co-powerment.
Last year’s scuttled event had seemed well timed amid global student climate strikes and Time magazine’s cover story on Greta Thunberg and the Power of Youth. Today, we have a new administration in Washington prioritizing climate change, as well as a national reckoning on race and the ongoing aftermath of a riot on Capitol Hill. All of this, and more, will factor into our deliberations.
We’ll report out in real time via SCA social media platforms in advance of a more formal account of Convening group outcomes and next steps in the weeks ahead.
February is National Youth Leadership Month…and there’s no better time to co-power a new generation of rising leaders.
