OUR WORK

OUR WORK

The Fellowship

The heart of SJF’s work is the Sustainable and Just Future - 2024/2025 Fellowship

What It’s About

Our Mission is to supercharge the next generation with the knowledge and skills they need to move into the workforce as climate solutionists.

The Goal of The Fellowship is to make climate solutions a core curriculum priority at U.S. universities by activating students to run their own advocacy campaigns and building a dialogue between students, faculty, and climate experts to implement new standards.

Fellows Are Being:

  1. Trained on SJF’s core concepts and solutions

  2. Provided a framework to survey the current state of environmental education on campus

  3. Supported in organizing community events to have open discussions of the problem and build support for a systemic education change

  4. Acting as stakeholders in partnering with school faculty to advocate for curriculum redesign and changes to the administration to prioritize climate solutions, systems thinking, and preparation for a greener future.

Over summer 2024, we spread the word about the work we wanted to be doing, what we would be able to offer, and what people could get out of it - and young people across the United States answered the call. Over 75 people reached out to express interest in joining us, and we would have loved to have worked with all of them, but we have to work within our capacity, as we can only support so many university campaigns at the same time, and so we carefully picked out a handful of them to represent their universities join us as 2024/2025 SJF Fellows. These Fellows are now doing recruiting of their own to build their team of Fellows at their university, giving their campaigns even more oomph.

What We Were Looking For

  • The Basics: Fellowship applicants needed to be students at a US higher education institution during the academic year 2024/2025, as our work is centred on US universities, and we want our Fellows to be current students so they’re really in the thick of things, putting them in the best position to make things happen there.

  • Passion: We want our Fellows to really care about the work, so we wanted to find people that believe in our mission, and are enthusiastic to share it.

  • Dedication: The workload is nothing crazy, but it's not the sort of thing you do just for fun. Becoming a Fellow is a position of responsibility that they’re expected to commit to, so we wanted to find people we knew were going to give the project the effort it deserves.

What They’re Getting Out Of It

  • Employability Skills: Earning skills and experience as a leader and changemaker as they build and execute their work with us.

  • High-Impact Work: Creating meaningful projects, events, and activities that have a tangible impact on student’s understanding of environmental and social justice, and empowering them to take action while also pushing for lasting systemic change.

  • Knowledge and Tools: They’re guided through our comprehensive environmental education and are provided the infrastructure through which to conduct their project, helping them understand what kind of education they’re campaigning for, and how to advocate for it (and learning lots themselves in the process).

  • Networking: Connecting with other Fellows, like-minded individuals, professionals, and faculty in the environmental field, expanding their network and opportunities for future collaboration.

  • Ownership: While we’re supporting them every step of the way, they get the agency to take their project where they think it needs to go.

What It Looks Like

The SJF 2024/2025 Fellowship is an opportunity to for students to bring an SJF advocacy program to their university, and it’s giving students the chance to build community power and gather data to support them as they campaign for curriculum shifts at their university.

The ultimate goal of the Fellowship is to support these students, our Fellows, as they spearhead a campaign at their university to push faculty and administration to more widely and effectively implement empowering, solutions-focused, interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education / curriculum, with the aim of leaving as many students as possible prepared to build sustainability into their careers and help make a better future.

Our approach gives students the opportunity to explore their university’s current relationship with sustainability education. Based on this, Fellows will then develop with us a format for delivery that suits their university's logistical landscape and their relevant connections, to bring education, action, and advocacy to their campus.

Fellows will strive to work alongside related organizations and entities, like environmental student clubs, as well as relevant faculty, to make curriculum change happen at their university. Fellows may have the chance to host taught sessions, sustainability summits, solutions-incubation sessions, community events, workshops, and discussion seminars, in support of their central goal of institutionalizing solutions-oriented sustainability in university curriculum.