New York, NY, September 25, 2020 - Led by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and supported by federal and local partners (including New York Sea Grant), the Resilient Schools Consortium (RiSC) has been providing programming and curriculum since 2017 to educate youth in NYC schools about climate change science and climate impacts, as well as natural and built solutions that increase climate resiliency. 

RiSC, the most recent activities for which  as well as ways in which you can help are detailed in a recent NWF blog post, engages students in knowledge-sharing through a variety of communication campaigns and provides access to hands-on projects - like tree planting and dune restoration - that mitigate the impacts of extreme weather. The program also creates opportunities for meaningful interactions with resilience practitioners, community members, and decision makers in NYC.

In a separate press release, NWF also announced that it has been awarded a three-year $450,000 grant renewal from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to advance the climate and resilience education program.

“In a world where extreme weather events, hurricanes and wildfires are ravaging communities and disproportionately threatening already vulnerable populations, programs like RiSC are urgently needed,” said Emily Fano, senior education manager and RiSC principal investigator for NWF in New York City. “Climate education is critical to help future generations understand and adapt to a rapidly changing world. 



As seen above, NYSG offered a brief synopsis of the first RiSC Summit, which held June 2018 in south Brooklyn at City University of New York/Brooklyn College. For more, see "NYSG Aids in Launch of Storm-RiSC, Plans for Springtime NYC Summit" and "Students Collaborate with Resilience Professionals at first RiSC Summit." Additionally, NYSG offers a Year 2 RiSC summit summary for 2019 in "Students Present Resiliency Guidelines at Final Resilient Schools."

The RiSC program is a partnership of Brooklyn College, the National Wildlife Federation’s Eco-Schools USA Program, the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, the Brooklyn Marine STEAM Education Alliance, and New York Sea Grant, and is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Literacy Grant program.

For more information about the RiSC program, visit www.riscnyc.org.

More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, University at Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly. Our program also produces an occasional e-newsletter,"NOAA Sea Grant's Social Media Review," via its blog, www.nyseagrant.org/blog.