Inspiring youth to learn about local impacts of climate change through filmmaking- a transformative experience

Climate change is one of the critical challenges for societies across the globe. The topic is often taught in a global context - making it hard for learners to relate it to their own lives. Climate change impacts vary locally thus exploring local climate change impacts through self-driven and self-directed learning is a powerful approach for students to relate to the topic. The Lens on Climate Change program guides students in an informal setting to explore climate change impacts locally through filmmaking. Students produce short films featuring those impacts on their local communities. Research data shows that the engagement through filmmaking is a transformative experience with participants showing significant increases in awareness of, concern about and knowledge of the topics when compared to a control group. Here we present data from three years of program implementation and an analysis across cohorts.