Turning Green is a global student-led movement devoted to cultivating a healthy, just and thriving planet through education and advocacy around environmentally sustainable and socially responsible choices. We inform, inspire, and mobilize a global network of students to become visionary catalysts for sustainable change in their lives, school campuses, and local communities.
With escalating health and environmental challenges, the next generation is essential in reimagining, collaborating on and transforming our collective future. Today’s youth have the hope, vision, knowledge and desire to build more sustainable, just communities, nations and societies worldwide. We focus on a student constituency in high school, college and graduate school around environmental sustainability, behavior change, conscious consumption and climate action to develop a rising generation of proactive citizens who understand the impacts of choice, leverage online and offline platforms to educate diverse populations, organize and amplify local and global movements, and possess the skills and tools to lead.
Since our non-profit began in 2005, Turning Green seeks to:
INFORM youth to shift daily actions, lifestyle choices and purchasing patterns
EMPOWER next generation advocates for positive change in their homes, schools, communities and countries in strong support of public and environmental health
MOBILIZE leaders of today and tomorrow, coalescing multigenerational coalitions of students, professionals, activists, educators, stakeholders, mentors, dreamers and doers
Turning Green provides leaders of today and tomorrow an opportunity to better understand personal and collective choice and impact, as well as the tools and resources to take action with our flagship programs:
CONSCIOUS CAMPUS
Project Green Challenge: An annual month-long competition that engages thousands of students across the globe through simple, relevant, high-impact sustainability-themed challenges, covering topics from personal health to food, fair trade, waste, energy, environmental justice and more. The challenge culminates with a 3-day PGC Finals summit in the SF Bay Area for ~16 outstanding students who gain invaluable knowledge, demonstrate capacity and go on to lead climate action projects.
Impact: 145,000+ students have participated on 9,700+ campuses in 50 states and 188 countries, 100M+ digitally
Internship Program: Year-round and summer-institute experiential learning opportunities that provide students with the knowledge, skills, confidence, training and mentorship to become powerful proactive citizens, activists and leaders on school campuses, in career paths and as members of communities worldwide.
Impact: 250+ students diving deeply into leadership opportunities each year
Through our work, Turning Green demonstrates that every individual of every age and background can affect change: one voice, one action, one student, one campus at a time — and together, a movement.
CONSCIOUS KITCHEN
This transformative, innovative program addresses food equity, education, and access by shifting the paradigm around school food service, while cultivating a local, ecological food system, and building nutrition literacy into school meals. Through a collaborative, replicable approach, CK partners with schools and school districts to break the cycle of packaged, overly processed food, transitioning to chef-prepared, scratch-cooked meals created in on-site school zero-waste kitchens, based on five foundational attributes: fresh, local, organic, seasonal and nutritious.
Impact: Daily programs running in multiple schools since 2013, first organic school district in the US, piloting and creating scalable frameworks for schools in California and nationwide
