ClimateTalk: Empowering the next generation to find their voice
Year Awarded
2025
Amount
€68,984
- Organisation:Dublin City University (DCU)
- Co-funded with Dept of Education:Yes
Project Summary
The world is in the midst of a climate crisis. As put by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in March 2023: “The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years”. At the same time, growing climate anxiety amongst children and young people has been attributed to feelings of powerlessness. ClimateTalk is a cross-curricular programme for Transition Year (TY) students where students develop their competency for science communication, science and media literacy, and multimedia creation, through the lens of the climate crisis.
Students learn to become confident and proficient science communicators, to identify reliable information versus misinformation and disinformation and to utilise multimedia techniques to create content which communicates their understanding of topics important to them. In doing so, a new generation of science communicators is nurtured, while we learn from them on how to engage this generation with issues of global importance.
The success of the programme across two funding rounds in 2024 – 2025 shows appetite amongst young people to engage with issues of global importance on their own terms and how such engagement makes young people feel empowered to make a difference. As we look to extend ClimateTalk and to make it accessible to more schools across Ireland, we will develop a teacher professional-learning programme to equip teachers with the knowledge and skills to deliver the programme in their schools. To ensure the programme meets the needs of teachers, we will do this in collaboration with practicing teachers.