Project Resilience: Empowering Gulf Coast Youth to Thrive in Transformative Communities

Abstract:

Project Resilience is a four-week high school curriculum that helps students 1) learn about the challenges to coastal resilience along the Gulf Coast of the United States and 2) make plans for short- and long-term resilience in their communities. Environmental challenges people face in this region include decreasing sediment deposition in the Mississippi delta, land subsidence, coastal erosion, sea level rise caused by climate change, impacts from hurricanes and other storms, and pollution. After completion of the four-week curriculum, which includes hands-on and data driven science lessons and a Resilience Planning Toolkit, students engaged with community partners, including business and industry, to develop and implement resilience plans to respond to environmental change in their communities. This project was implemented in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, during the 2019-2020 school year and is currently being shared with teachers and communities throughout the Gulf Coast region. This project was implemented by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Center for Science Education and the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center, with support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine under Grant Agreement number 2000009811.