Education
Increasing hands-on youth access to fire restoration and risk reduction.
How do you prepare a generation to take on rampant fire risk, and restore healthy ecosystems?
We believe solutions can start in school.
Our education system is responsible for preparing young people for the world we are inheriting. When it comes to addressing catastrophic wildfires, we envision schools full of solution-ready students.
When we get hands-on fire experience, it can change our lives. Few such opportunities exist right now in the U.S., and not nearly enough to match the scale of this crisis. But that can change.
We strive to understand and build knowledge around pathways to create hands-on student fire programs, based on the experiences, barriers, and strategies of current fire programs at high school and college campuses.
Hands-On School Fire Programs
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Our first goal is to compile an active list and map of hands-on school fire programs in the U.S. See Our Running List!
These programs serve a dual purpose: increasing local resilience and preparing the next generation.
Programs also provide pathways for underrepresented students in land and fire management. For example, Alabama A&M is a Historical Black College (HBCU) whose graduates contribute to the increasing diversity of the fire world.
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We aim to create a public guide for developing and sustaining hands-on school fire programs. We will collaborate with existing program coordinators, agencies, and practitioners. The guide will share the successes, struggles, and strategies of current models.
This guide will be a kickstarter for coordinators looking to create initiatives in new places. It will increase knowledge sharing among school fire programs. And it will be helpful for decision-makers who want to improve pathways for serving communities, from schools into fire resilience.
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Our work has already helped identify education systems as a key focus for wildfire resilience solutions, through our role in the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission report. As we learn more about school fire programs and what makes them successful, we will leverage this knowledge in our efforts.
We plan to work in partnership with programs and practitioners to develop and advance policy that can facilitate the expansion of school fire programs in fire-prone communities and fire-dependent landscapes around the US.
