Let’s Make April Earth and Climate Education Month

  SEE ENDORSErS BELOW

Our Campaign

We are all stakeholders in public education, and it is an enormously important tool for addressing the climate crisis. 

Starting April 2024, we’re launching a multi-year campaign: to make April ‘Earth and Climate Education’ Month. We encourage students and teachers everywhere in Ontario to integrate ecological and climate learning into all of their programs in the month of April.

We call on every educational institution and organization across Ontario to endorse our campaign for excellent environmental and climate change education.

Our Goals

  1. To encourage students and teachers across all grades and subjects - and every person who wants to participate, in any setting - to weave environmental and climate change learning into their goals and activities throughout the month of April 2024.

  2. To create public awareness of the need for environmental and climate change education and build support for K-12 curriculum reform that integrates environmental and climate education into all subjects for all grades across Ontario.

  3. To call upon the Ontario Ministry of Education to formally declare April Earth and Climate Education Month.

Endorsers

About

Earth and Climate Education Month is inspired by Earth Day, which began in 1970 as a day for environmental learning, for celebrating our beloved planet, and defending her from pollution and other threats. Fifty-three years later, we are witnessing an accelerating global climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels and overconsumption.

Earth and Climate Education Month builds on the legacy of Earth Day and adds a focus on climate education. For younger students, learning may include experiencing the natural world, building deep connection and interest in protecting it. Older students can learn the causes and impacts of climate change, and about climate justice. Climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and systemic inequity are interconnected, and they require interconnected solutions.​

Addressing crises demands knowledge and a host of skills that schools can teach, including leadership. Young people in Ontario need and want this critical learning. Nearly four out of five young people say climate change undermines their mental health, and more than one in three report that their feelings about it “negatively impact daily functioning.” A majority say the education system should be doing “more” or “a lot more” to educate them on climate change.  (Galway & Field, 2023).​

Globally, the movement for climate change education is growing:  New Jersey, Maine and Washington have made climate change education mandatory in schools; countries including Finland, Cambodia and Argentina are establishing climate change in their curricula. The United Nations has called for climate change to be taught in all schools by 2025.

EEON invites everyone in Ontario to add their voices to this global movement. Together, Let's Make April ‘Earth and Climate Education’ Month.

How To Help

EEON is preparing guidelines, collecting resource links, and creating outreach materials. We are also fundraising to enhance our capacity for outreach and promotion of this campaign.  
 

Please join us! You can help by: 

  • Informing your members and others in your networks to encourage their participation