Sydney Coldren, a senior at Rice University studying anthropology and environmental studies, was selected as one of 12 students to join an initiative aimed at empowering students across North America to gather climate stories and advocate for climate literacy in institutions of higher learning.
The My Climate Story (MCS) public research project at the University of Pennsylvania recently launched its new Campus Correspondents initiative, where students were selected to collect and compile personal perspectives on climate change. Working in collaboration with MCS, these correspondents will look to not only amplify the voices from their own communities but also strive for administrative and policy action in favor of an increase in resources dedicated to climate literacy in higher education.
Coldren said she was extremely excited to be selected into this multinational cohort of students and is honored to be able to represent the state of Texas.
“This was something that was really personal to me because when I got to college, I wasn’t very climate literate,” Coldren said. “There’s been so much growth over my college career in beginning to realize that climate change is something that matters more than just the numbers and the science. This is something that is impacting people on a daily basis in a very emotional way.”
Coldren is filming and editing a series of videos showcasing her community’s climate stories through videos shared on social media and other mediums. Her video of a Rice student’s climate story has already been shared and can be viewed here. In total, the cohort will be creating a body of work made up of around 150 unique perspectives.
“People are coming from all over, and they have such unique experiences with climate change. Every story is important,” Coldren said. “Being able to capture the width and the breadth of all these impacts of climate change is really powerful to me.
“Climate change is something that we are all intimately experiencing every day. It’s in the air that we breathe, it’s in the smog, it’s in the choices we make every day. These are all part of a climate story that’s so much larger, and I think this project is such a beautiful way to bring attention to that in such an accessible way.”
MCS focuses on capturing the personal, human dimensions of climate change, facilitating community conversations from local to global levels. MCS began as a series of climate storytelling workshops co-developed by educators, Penn students and hundreds of students across the Philadelphia high school system. The workshops have now been offered over 40 times online and in person. Additionally, MCS has established a growing Climate Story Bank — a collection of personal narratives searchable by location or climate impact.
To learn how you can share your own story, visit my-climate-story.org.