Description of the Summit

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The Environmental Youth Summit, scheduled for March 26 - 27, 2010, will bring together ten regional high schools and youth organizations with teams of 5-8 students and their teacher/advisors to investigate an environmental challenge they face in their school or community. The conference is being hosted at the Rich Products' Atrium in Buffalo, NY. The breathtaking Atrium is surrounded by corporate conference rooms that serve as the breakout rooms for the student teams. Dave Bauer, president of Sustainable Earth Solutions, Inc., is delivering the training during the two day conference. Among the sponsors is the International Center for Studies in Creativity (ICSC) at Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York, an active partner providing 10 graduate students to assist in the facilitation during the conference and post conference coaching. The intent of this conference is to use creative thinking skills that will be applied to the plans of action that the teams create while attending the conference. This unique conference will bring together urban, suburban and rural students to collaborate during the design and implantation phases of the training. After identifying each student team's environmental challenge, the teams create plans of action that are implemented after the Summit. Forty-five days of mentoring/coaching is provided for the students by the training team. Teams send in 45-Dy Reports documenting work done to date, and plans are checked for sustainability. "Seed money awards" up to $200 can be earned by school team. Cost per school team is $200 due to the funding assistance of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, HSBC, Solar Liberty and Higgins for Congress.

Summary of Three Phases of the conference:

Phase I. Teachers and student teams attend the 2 day conference. By conclusion of two days, a Plan of Action is developed using creative problem solving strategies applied from the training regarding the teams’ environmental challenge. Teams register as participants on the Community Foundation's GreenTable.
Phase II. Teachers and student teams implement their designed plans of action while mentoring and coaching occur from the training team of Bauer and the graduate students from the ICSC. Teams post their projects on the GreenTable web site and provide updates. Students are encouraged to review each others' plans and progress and offer feedback to members of other schools' teams. Advocacy training is giving to each team through the work of Sara Emhof president of Indaba, an innovative youth leadership training organization. This period is 45 days after the Summit.
Phase III. Teachers and student teams complete a 45 Day Report to Bauer showing sustainability of the steps taken to date. School teams completing satisfactory reports using stated criteria are awarded $200 as seed money for their projects. The students from the Summit sustain their efforts and network with students around the world through the use of the GreenTable web site interface.