\u201cWhen I heard about Climate Stewards, I just thought: wow, this is amazing,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cNot only did we do a deep dive on the science, we practiced how to talk about it and apply it to what\u2019s happening in New York state. It\u2019s also about creating community, about mentoring and building these connections that spark ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stewards commit to 40 hours of service in their communities; since the program began in 2021, stewards have established community composting systems, formed and contributed to resilience task forces, created native pollinator habitats and hosted educational events with attendance in the hundreds. In total, nearly 200 stewards have participated in the program, supported by extension educators representing 35 counties and New York City. And the program is poised to grow: the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) began funding the training last year in collaboration with the\u00a0Climate Smart Communities<\/a> (CSC) program, a long-standing statewide effort to support local governments in addressing the impacts of more intense storms, heat and flooding.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are over 1,500 local governments in New York state that are all key to making progress on emissions and addressing climate impacts, and they\u2019re all facing different hazards \u2013 we can\u2019t do this in a top-down, uniform, standardized way,\u201d said Dazzle Ekblad, NYSDEC\u2019s statewide coordinator for CSC. \u201cThe Cornell Climate Stewards program is absolutely critical for educating and engaging people and enabling them to offer their communities creative solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Brown<\/a>, the Climate Stewards program leader, said he\u2019s seen the curriculum channel community members\u2019 passion and concern into agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really rewarding to say that we led people from wanting to learn more and being aware of the problem to taking action,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n Adding capacity to local government<\/p>\n The origins of the program date back to a 2017-2020 multi-state assessment, led by\u00a0Allison Chatrchyan<\/a>, senior research associate and adjunct professor in the Cornell Law School, that determined what local governments need to address the impacts of climate change: more capacity and resources.<\/p>\n A new butterfly garden at Woodland Park in Pelham, New York was installed by Cornell Climate Steward Allison Anderson with the Junior League of Pelham and many others.<\/p>\n With knowledge of the need but a shifting funding landscape for climate-related work, Chatrchyan \u2013 along with\u00a0Kathy Bunting-Howarth<\/a>, associate director of NYSG and assistant director of CCE, as well as extension staff, postdocs and students \u2013 created a curriculum on a shoestring budget and began offering the program online in 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s notable that it was a team of people at Cornell and their partners who saw the need for the program and built it, had a vision for it and showed its value,\u201d Ekblad said. \u201cNow we\u2019re able to inject more resources to make it bigger and reach further, and it\u2019s a great thing to watch evolve.\u201d<\/p>\n The training is now available online and through county CCE offices, helping stewards fulfill that original capacity need. Anderson has even become an elected official in Westchester County, joining the Village of Pelham Board of Trustees in December.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew this was an issue I wanted to bring into greater focus for local government, and the Climate Stewards program gave me this huge amount of knowledge about what\u2019s happening at the state level and what tools and resources are available for local governments,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n As part of her 40-hour project, Anderson and others resurrected a defunct Sustainability Advisory Board to advise the village and conduct public outreach. She established a task force for the village to pursue certifications under CSC, which could open doors for more funding, and, with the Junior League of Pelham, is creating a bioswale and rain garden demonstration site, a \u201clearning lab\u201d for residents interested in flood mitigation strategies they can implement at home.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re finding is that there are all of these happy mediums or smaller steps you can take, which has been really rewarding,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd the response has been overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n Helping educators teach climate change<\/p>\n Across the state, in Cattaraugus County, the Climate Stewards program came at just the right time for high school science teacher Kelli Grabowski.<\/p>\n Grabowski completed the training a few months before New York state approved a\u00a0Climate Education Initiative<\/a> that will require public schools to teach the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. The mandate will take effect in 2027 for grades 5 through 12.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of my peers, from the teacher who\u2019s been in the classroom for 35 years to the teacher who stepped in yesterday \u2013 none of them have background in climate change and how to teach it,\u201d said Grabowski, who was part of a committee to develop the statewide initiative and participated in the Climate Stewards program with three other teachers. \u201cWe all felt like for us the most important piece was learning how to have difficult conversations and how to have kids discuss these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Kelli Grabowski (right) and three other public school science teachers participated in the Cornell Climate Stewards program in Cattaraugus County, in preparation to teach about climate change.<\/p>\n For their volunteer project, the stewards hosted a workshop inspired by the Climate Stewards curriculum, with a focus on data and observable, local impacts as a common ground \u2013 like warmer winters and more flooding. They brought in community members who could speak to the changes they\u2019ve seen and how it\u2019s impacting their industries, from tourism to agriculture.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really well received by the teachers,\u201d Grabowski said.<\/p>\n Grabowski hopes to host a youth climate summit next year and plans to adapt lessons directly from the Climate Stewards curriculum.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why the Stewards program is so important as a foundation for every teacher, because it gives you the content,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to get this program to more teachers and pre-service teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n Toward a more connected community<\/p>\n Anderson and Grabowski said the Climate Stewards program helped them build new networks within their regions and across the state, including with Cornell faculty and extension staff they can now call on for guidance. And robust attendance at steward-led events shows a hunger for connection and local action around climate change, said Kelly McDonald, executive director of CCE Cattaraugus County.<\/p>\n McDonald was surprised when more than 50 community members showed up to an Earth Day event hosted by the county\u2019s 2025 cohort of stewards. After presentations concluded, nearly half pulled chairs into a circle to continue the conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was people from the community who showed up, who wanted to stay and talk about these issues, who wanted to feel that they were not alone,\u201d McDonald said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the stewards give them the opportunity to do, and it was really great to see and to feel that we were all a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n A new statewide online session of the Climate Stewards program will be offered starting Sept. 10, and local sessions at CCE offices are offered throughout the year. For more information, community members can reach out to their local CCE offices or\u00a0to the Climate Stewards program directly<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As an international humanitarian aid worker, Allison Anderson has seen impoverished communities mobilize in the face of climate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-291347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cornell](\"https:\/\/media.univcomm.cornell.edu\/chronicle\/initiatives\/nysimpact\/nys-impact.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n