Beginning two summers ago in a building lacking reliable power and internet, dozens of teenagers in Bo City, Sierra Leone watched videos about climate science, then discussed opportunities to build resilience in one of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations.
The Community Youth Climate Science Lab and Collaboration Hub - founded by a Cornell expert and an alumnus of the U.S. Department of State's Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders - has since helped plant 1,500 shade trees, built raised-bed gardens and cultivated a network of future leaders invested in climate adaptation in their hometown, Sierra Leone's second-largest city.
The hub's leaders say it provides a model for developing climate awareness and resilience in "secondary cities" globally - places that may have fewer resources than larger regional centers, and that may need to absorb migrants displaced by more severe weather impacts elsewhere, and. Key to the hub's success, they say: empowering the young people who will confront climate migration, and who as future leaders can help bridge new scientific information with established local knowledge.
"Youth are often left out of the climate conversation, but they're the ones who will inherit the problem," said Rebecca Morgenstern Brenner, associate teaching professor in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. "We need to give them pathways to be part of building solutions."
Brenner is the corresponding author of "Youth Empowerment for Urban Climate Resilience: Establishing a Climate Science and Collaboration Hub in Bo City, Sierra Leone," published Feb. 2 in the journal World. Co-authors are Bashiru Koroma, president of the nonprofit Keep Africa Beautiful Sierra Leone, which runs the hub; and Sonny Patel, a presidential fellow in the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative at Georgia State University and visiting scientist at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
The concept originated during Koroma's 2023 visit to Cornell with Mandela Washington Fellows, hosted by the Brooks School and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. During a course Brenner led on disaster vulnerability and resilience, Koroma realized that flooding several hours away in Freetown - Sierra Leone's coastal capital and largest city - would drive many people inland to Bo City. Sierra Leone, which experiences some of the world's highest annual rainfall totals, already ranks among the world economies most vulnerable to climate effects, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate system shifts are projected to cause intensified rain events and prolonged dry spells, according to the World Bank.
To address knowledge and infrastructure gaps there, and to invest in adaptive capacity that could be both lasting and replicable in Sierra Leone, West Africa and beyond, Koroma and Brenner focused on youth engagement. Conventional approaches, Brenner said, might have encouraged an outside expert such as herself to visit briefly, or imposed one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, starting with a two-week program in June 2024, the researchers partnered with five secondary schools to introduce students aged 10 to 17 to climate science. The schools helped identify 100 likely future leaders - a roughly equal number of boys and girls, promoting gender equity - to participate in ongoing activities at the two-classroom hub.
"These youth who are going to be the decisionmakers in the future are networked with each other and starting to work together to understand their environmental system and how to mitigate challenges," Brenner said. "The science is valuable information, but they're going to know that place better than we do."
Brenner helped train four facilitators who in turn trained local teachers. (The research is dedicated to one of those facilitators, the late James H.B. Yambassu.) Because the hub's limited internet access prevented livestreamed conversations, Brenner pivoted to recording short videos on topics requested by hub participants, from food security and sustainable agricultural to water management and microfinancing. The grant funded the purchase of a solar panel and equipment for presenting the videos, including a computer, projector and screen.
In addition to hands-on activities like tree planting and maintaining climate-smart gardens, the 100 students - called African Civic and Environmental Education Change fellows - lead climate clubs at their schools. Hub leaders say their focus on youth engagement and blending science with Indigenous knowledge is a low-cost, inclusive approach that other communities could adopt, regardless of existing infrastructure.
"We have built a team of passionate and dedicated volunteers engaged in running the hub," Koroma said. "We plan to expand our operation so that we can replicate these ideas in other secondary cities with more partnership, collaboration and funding opportunities."
The hub's establishment and related research was funded by a grant from the Mandela Washington Fellowship, a U.S. State Department program administered by IREX.
