Giving Compass' Take:

• Youth climate activists are adapting to the pandemic by utilizing virtual tools and social media to run campaigns through phone banks and friend-to-friend organizing. 

• How can donors restructure their giving so that it can support youth climate activists in 2020? 

• Read more about how activists are still addressing environmental problems during COVID-19. 

For young climate activists in the United States, staying home because of the pandemic does not mean staying silent, with plans gathering pace across the country to make their voices heard in November’s elections.

It has been nearly a year since an estimated 6 million people across the world joined the youth-led global climate strikes on September 20.

In the United States, students from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., skipped school to voice their frustration over the slow response to the climate crisis by elected leaders, and Greta Thunberg told a cheering crowd in New York City “this is only the beginning.”

But in the 10 months since the historic protests, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the United States, making meeting and organizing in person hazardous. Climate strikes, including a major three-day mass protest that was planned for Earth Day 2020 in April, have been canceled.

But networks of youth climate activists have been regrouping, with a new focus on election campaigning with phone banks, social media, and friend-to-friend organizing, according to interviews with organizers.

The stakes could not be higher for young people, according to 23-year-old Aracely Jimenez-Hudis, the deputy communications director of the Sunrise Movement, a leading youth advocacy group on the climate.

Recent months have helped some young climate activists see that the same systemic changes needed to address climate change are in line with the ones that will bring racial justice, escalating the need for elected officials who will bring those changes.

Read the full article about youth climate activism in 2020 by Lauren Aratani at Grist.