The Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC) aims to broaden the conversation among today’s youth, helping them envision tomorrow’s climate-changed planet with hope.

Addressing both mitigation – causes and contributing factors – and adaptation – effects and impacts – is key to an effective approach to addressing climate change.

The conversation about climate change has focused largely on systemic causes and impacts, which can feel insurmountable for all of us and especially for children with little agency to make needed changes. By including adaptation in CIC, CAVU is bringing more balance to the conversation and sharing a hopeful view of the future that creates pathways for children to engage productively.

Working on adaptation projects provides an opportunity for children to approach climate change from a new perspective and develop solutions that create local, concrete, visible improvement in quality of life.

The planet needs an all-hands-on-deck approach to successfully manage the impacts our communities are already experiencing. Adding adaptation and resilience to students’ climate response toolkits is an essential step to ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to take part in addressing the challenges presented by climate change.