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Our Group Norms

Below you can find a summary of our group norms statements. These are a series of ever evolving guidelines that help our leaders maintain and sustain a safe, inclusive and justice oriented space. Our top priority in the YCAN is to provide a platform for young people to take action together and find our voices as leaders. These group norms demonstrate the shared expectations of how YCAN members can uphold the integrity and inclusivity of our group culture. These guidelines also reflect the constantly changing nature of this program. As new members join and as our leading members grow as advocates for environmental justice, the contents of these norms are always open for changes, edits, and feedback.

We have also designed this group norms list to be an interactive experience. As you read through and process these agreements, feel free to think of this document as a worksheet or template! Whenever you see a section titled Thinking Question(s) you are invited to brainstorm on what your own answers might be. These questions are meant to get students thinking about the intentionality of this safe space and to envision how we can strive to create an inclusive culture of resilience, hope, connectivity, passion, and change.   

• Centering Youth Leadership and Actively Participating   

Each regional team might have a different interpretation of what leadership looks like in their group. Generally speaking, being a part of a YCLP team means attending regular meetings, completing weekly action items, checking our emails regularly, engaging in group discussions as well as participating in the decision making process by sharing our thoughts, ideas, questions, and needs to the full group. 

Thinking Question(s): What does youth leadership look like to you? What does empowerment mean to you?

• Prioritizing Inclusion and Creating More Opportunities for Collaboration  

Each new leader that joins our network adds a unique and powerful perspective and skill set to our multifaceted organizing initiatives. We believe that in order to confront the complex and pressing challenges of adapting in the age of the climate crisis, we need a vast network of creative minds, critical thinkers, and divergent perspectives from a multitude of backgrounds to be asking big questions, engaging in dynamic community organizing work, and mobilizing their communities around sustainability projects. 

In order to establish a collaborative and generative culture of innovation and inclusivity, we expect all leaders to follow the make space-take space rule as needed. In addition to this we also hope that leaders will be proactively working to include everyone in conversation and helping the team to continue cycling through leadership roles and sharing responsibilities. 

Thinking Question(s): What does inclusion look like to you? How can you participate in the make space-take space rule? What would it mean for us to view our programs as ecosystems of interconnection and interdependence? 

• Building a Community of Connection and Belonging 

In the YCLP we believe that in order to make change and take action towards transformative justice we need to be working from a strong foundation of safety, trust, and collective resilience. 

In order to co-create an inclusive group culture we all need to be working in tandem to define what a safe space means to us and what we would like to receive from and give back to this community. 

We know that this type of environment doesn’t simply happen naturally because we call it a safe space or we put labels on it but rather that a safe must be thought of as an evolving agreement that is constantly changing and needs to be intentionally maintained by the participants in that space.

Oftentimes, the most powerful force of transformative change and the most essential human need is a strong sense of belonging to a community or group of people with shared experiences, identities, and goals. That means we must strive to cultivate this culture of belonging and connectivity in every aspect of our organizing.   

Thinking Question(s): Can you think of a time when you were in a space where you felt like you truly belonged there? How does it feel to exist in a space of belonging? What does a safe space feel like to you? 

• Prioritizing our Mental Health 

As young people grappling with the reality of growing up in the age of climate change, being a part of organizing efforts can at times become incredibly isolating, overwhelming and exhausting. We are all struggling to balance the many commitments in our lives from school to work to family to the simple challenge of working through feelings of eco-anxiety, eco-anger, and eco-grief. This program provides a safe platform for students to cultivate eco hope as well as hold space for these feelings of fear, anger, and grief. 

Prioritizing our mental health can look very different to each of us. For some, being a part of a hopeful community of changemakers fighting for our right to a livable future can be an incredibly inspiring and empowering experience. But we also recognize that organizing work can feel emotionally taxing and can lead to more pressure, anxiety and overwhelm. In order to avoid activist burnout, we want to encourage and support all our leaders in listening to their bodies and their hearts when it’s time to take a break. 

As members of this group, we expect all leaders to be communicative about when they need time to rest, what other ways our group can support them in centering mental health, how we can strengthen our resilience as youth, as well as how we can further expand our eco-hope projects. 

Thinking Question(s): What images/ideas/feelings come up for you when you think of eco-grief? What does eco-hope feel like to you and where do you draw resilience from? How can the YCLP better prioritize mental health?    

• Working to Dismantle Systemic Inequalities in Our Organizing Efforts 

In the YCLP we strive to create a divergent community of youth leaders with intersectional identities and backgrounds. Our program is rooted in the principles of environmental justice and we strive to create a community of students committed to dismantling systems of white supremacy culture in our work. 

We believe that community organizing work is about engaging in a collective envisioning process. By building justice oriented spaces of equity and inclusion we are working to build microcosms of the society we one day wish to live in. 

These antiracist and anticapitalist networks of collective action and transformative change will continue to grow and expand. We want to work to lead by example through our organizing efforts.  

Thinking Question(s): What does justice mean to you? How can our organization best embody our DEIJA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice) goals? 

• Disrupting Norms of ‘Professionalism’ in the Climate Movement 

In the YCLP, we strive to create a community of fun :) Whether this means wearing sparkles and sequins clothes to political rallies, dancing together to calm our nerves in the hallways of the statehouse before entering a legislative meeting, or taking a break from our workshops to go swimming in a nearby lake. 

We encourage all students to leave the constraints and pressures to conform to preconceived (adult) standards of professionalism at the door and instead we work to hold space for youthful and joyous connection and give ourselves full permission to be completely ourselves. In the climate movement, young people often feel the need to ‘pretend to be an adult’ in order for our voices, perspectives, and demands to be heard and respected. This forces us to compromise the very same qualities that make the youth perspective so valuable, important, and essential in our society. 

We, as young people, are creative, hopeful, imaginative, passionate leaders and we should not have to let go of these aspects of our identities or force ourselves to play an uncomfortable role in order to participate in the climate movement and advocate for our rights in political spaces. As a youth led program, we believe that students are qualified and powerful leaders of change just by being yourself! 

Thinking Question(s): What brings you joy in climate organizing? Are there aspects of your identity that you feel like you have to let go/downplay/hide in order for your voice to be heard? 

• Recognizing that Everyone is on a Learning Journey 

Be gentle to yourself and be gentle with others. 

It’s important to understand everyone is at a different stage in their learning process. We want to make space for people of all backgrounds, beliefs, identities, and experience levels. This means that if we run into conflict along the way we must ground ourselves in the knowledge that we are all connected through our shared passion for change. 

Thinking Question(s): How can we learn and grow from our mistakes in organizing spaces?