Youth Climate Action ProgramYouth Climate Action Program
A youth volunteer program focused on climate action, collaboration, and community engagement.
Content Detail
The Youth Climate Action Program is an opportunity for high school students to engage with climate change on a deeper level by leading their own local climate action project.
Through guided learning, peer collaboration, and mentorship from Arboretum staff, participants in the Youth Climate Action Program develop their own climate action project over a 12-week period. The program culminates in a public showcase where participants share their work and inspire others to act. The Arboretum has collaborated with different participant groups for the program, such as interns drawn from Arboretum youth volunteers and an area high school environmental club.
The Youth Climate Action Program is designed to foster youth leadership, build self-efficacy, and strengthen understanding of climate change as a local and global issue. Participants will leave with a deeper awareness of the collective actions they can take—and inspire others to take—through community-based solutions and science communication.
As a member of the national Climate Toolkit Youth Network, The Morton Arboretum connects its youth leaders with a broader community of peers and institutions committed to climate education.
How to Get Involved
If you are a youth group leader and want to discuss opportunities to participate in the program, email youthvolunteers@mortonarb.org.
2026 Youth Climate Action Projects
The Morton Arboretum’s Youth Climate Action program empowers high school students to connect with plants and take positive climate action through a youth-led project after school.
In 2026 during the spring semester, Arboretum staff worked with Benet Academy’s Environmental Club students and teacher. Benet youth created and staffed an Earth Day pop-up exhibition in the Arboretum’s Visitor Center on Saturday, April 18, to encourage Arboretum visitors to reduce, reuse, and recycle to help with climate change.
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The Earth Day pop-up exhibition showcased interactive displays the students created to inspire action regarding these materials: clothing, glass, plastic bags, and batteries.
For clothing, visitors tried to identify a “fast fashion” vs. a “slow fashion” clothing item, saw examples of repaired clothing, and could decorate a patch to take home to repair a rip or cover a stain. Young children played with sewing cards.
For glass, visitors learned which glass items may not be recyclable, saw creatively repurposed glass jars decorated with pressed flowers or planted as a terrarium, and felt glass sand made from bottles that is used for coastal restoration.
For batteries, visitors learned what pollutants batteries release if not recycled, taped connections on batteries that pose a fire risk, and learned how a lemon battery works.
For plastic bags, visitors took home a reusable bag and could try their hand at repurposing plastic bags into “plarn” (plastic yarn).
2025 Youth Climate Action Projects
The Youth Climate Action program empowers high school students to connect with plants and take positive climate action through a youth-led project after school.
In 2025, three teen interns chose to create and staff an Earth Day pop-up exhibition in the Arboretum’s Visitor Center on Saturday, April 19, to encourage reducing the use of plastic to help with climate change and improve the health of waterways.
The pop-up exhibition showcased interactive displays the students created to inspire action.
A diorama of the DuPage River that runs through the West Side of the Arboretum, made out of cardboard and live plants, encouraged people to walk the footbridge path by parking lot P-33.
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The pop-up exhibition showcased interactive displays the students created to inspire action.
A diorama of the DuPage River that runs through the West Side of the Arboretum, made out of cardboard and live plants, encouraged people to walk the footbridge path by parking lot P-33.
Plastic trash collected from the river earlier that week by the Arboretum’s staff and natural resources volunteers in the annual DuPage River Sweep was displayed along with a few household items to suggest ways people could make easy changes to reduce plastic waste—such as using laundry detergent sheets rather than laundry detergent in a plastic jug.
A painting and coloring activity engaged visitors in creating and decorating fish from cardboard cutouts, to take home or to display on a communal “river board.”
A “Recycle Toss” carnival-style game in the Children’s Garden was a new youth volunteer-led activity.