Project Green Course - Turning Green

Elevating Emerging Climate Leaders Across the Globe

Project Green Course is a climate initiative designed to empower Undergraduate, Graduate, and Ph.D. students around the world to become catalysts for positive environmental transformation on their campuses and in their communities. Through mobilizing a global network of changemakers, Project Green Course influences direct action toward a healthy, just, and resilient future for people and the planet.

Meet the Cohort

Students

Staff

Speakers

An inaugural class of emerging leaders from around the world attended the 15-week program, meeting twice a week for live sessions. One session engaged with leading climate experts and visionary speakers, and the other implemented skills-building workshops which helped students hone personal project offerings designed to address an environmental concern. Each session broadens perspectives on key environmental and social justice topics, illustrates the intersections vital to this work, and sharpens critical thinking, leadership, communication, and professional skills — to propel agents of change with passion, purpose, and power. PGCourse facilitates deep discussion, meaningful reflection, and solutions-based thinking to activate voices and actualize potential.

These learnings are put into practice through students’ self-created Climate Action Projects (CAPs), designed to impact ongoing environmental issues in their communities. Each PGCourse participant receives financial and social support for their CAP, gaining advice from staff, students, and speakers throughout the program. As a result, students have the freedom to create their own environmental passion projects, right in their backyard.

Academic Advisory Board

“Access to high quality education moves people from one stage of life to another. Once you can read and write you are empowered to know more, grow and develop an informed perspective of the world.” – Yaw Agyeman Boafo, Ph.D, University of Ghana

Project Green Course Curriculum

Week 1:

Activate Your Voice

This week, we’ll learn to activate our voices as catalysts for environmental change. Matt Scott, will share his journey to becoming a climate storytelling and engagement manager at Project Drawdown. We’ll also hear from award-winning business economist Dr. Jagannadha Pawan Tamvada about how strategic and personal storytelling can shift hearts and mindsets.

Week 2:

Environmental Storytelling

Compelling, well-crafted and inspiring stories about the environment have the potential to impact minds and hearts in this era of climate uncertainty. Together we will explore the stories that matter most to us and why, with a view to creating our own stories focused on an environmental issue where we live.

Week 3:

Energize Your Leadership

This week will focus on the relationship between science, leadership and environmental action. We’ll explore the stakeholder landscape in our communities and the environmental decisions that directly impact them through a hands-on workshop with Herbicide Free Campus.

Week 4:

The Nexus of Footprint & Climate Justice

This week we’ll hear from Marinel Ubaldo and Jamie Margolin, some of the most prominent youth activists to emerge recently in the global climate movement. Through a workshop session with climate leader Kera O’Regan, we’ll learn about the role of climate justice advocacy in creating a healthier and more equitable future on the planet.

Week 5:

Food, Farming & Stewardship

Here we’ll take a look at land systems and agroecological stewardship through the lens of farmers, foragers and chefs. With a focus on food, this week’s journey will take us deeper into food cultures and farming practices around the world.

Week 6:

Water

This week, we’ll think through freshwater resources, policy and management, including practical ways of planning for community water access in the future. Through the lens of inventor and water innovator Beth Koigi who founded a company to build equitable water access in Kenya, we’ll learn about adapting community water systems in the context of a changing climate.

Week 7:

Ocean Solutions

Roughly a third of our carbon emissions are sequestered by the oceans each year. Yet many of the changes caused by a warming climate in the ocean are invisible to communities on land. This week we'll dive into the deep with marine scientists, researchers, artists, and coral ecologists to learn about how we can become responsible stewards of our oceans.

Week 8:

Ethical Business

Ethical business and responsible consumption have the power to change how humans relate to and consume finite resources. We’ll look at the role that ethical business leaders are playing in transforming our relationship to the environment.

Week 9:

Nature as a Design Blueprint

To help the transition to focusing on climate action projectss, we’ll learn from nature, through the lens of Beth Rattner, Executive Director of the Biomimicry Institute. Dr. Yaw Boafo will offer participatory techniques to engage communities in the process of building solutions. The final workshop will feature a design thinking expert guiding us on a journey to creating successful impact projects.

Week 10-15:

Final Project Work

For the last 6 weeks of the course, we’ll work on our climate impact projects in small groups. Even though we won’t be regularly gathering as an entire class, we’ll continue to receive mentorship, guidance and gather for community time where we can receive support, feedback and inspiration to help with the implementation of our projects.

Week 16:

Culminating Project Presentation

Participants process the discoveries and impact they have made on their communities by presenting their final project to course members. Students will recieve feedback emphasizing vision, progress, and next steps.

Sanjana Acharya, PGCourse Participant

“About a year ago I was sent a link to Project Green Course via my university, and I honestly didn’t think too much about it when I signed up… Little did I know, I was embarking on a course and project that would be the most meaningful thing in my life so far.”

Grace Leary, PGCourse TA

“In a time where internships are few and far between, and when limited to what we can do from little boxes on our screens, Turning Green was a light in the dark. Despite being miles away, even continents away, from everyone, I was able to make connections, gain experience, and most importantly, be a part of a larger movement of environmental action and education.”

Danja Dipokarto, PGCourse Participant

“You have given me the opportunity of a lifetime, meeting people from all over the world, opening my eyes and expanding my horizons to what the world could be, and giving me the motivation to do something that I had never thought I was able to do at my age!”

What you change, changes you.

Through their projects, participants in Project Green Course become accomplished environmental leaders ready to cultivate solutions for our time. In 2024, the program will continue to cultivate the wisdom and leadership necessary for the long-haul collective movement-building that reaches far beyond what any single project can accomplish alone.

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