Our Invitation To You

The challenge of climate change is formidable but young people can be change agents

We are delighted to invite you to review one (or more) of Operation Noah’s new range of Christian climate change education resources.

We know that climate change has significant and multifaceted impacts on young people. For some it may have an impact upon their mental health, others may find it affects their physical well-being, and for some young people their future prospects may have changed even before they leave school, college or university. Research shows that younger generations are more likely to experience climate anxiety and distress due to concerns about their future and the perceived lack of action from older generations and governments.

This anxiety is often exacerbated by awareness or direct impact of the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, which can lead to stress and mental health issues.

Operation Noah see climate change as a serious threat requiring both urgent action and education. We celebrate the excellent educational work that many Christian and other charities have, in recent years, done to resource teachers and informal educators yet feel we can help educators - especially those working with eleven to nineteen year olds.

We agree with the UK Department of Education's statement (made in 2022) that said: “The challenge of climate change is formidable. For children and young people to meet it with determination, and not with despair, we must offer them not just truth, but also hope.

Learners need to know the truth about climate change – through knowledge-rich education. They must also be given the hope that they can be agents of change, through hands-on activity and, as they progress, through guidance and programmes allowing them to pursue a green career pathway in their chosen field.” - The DfE Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy (2022)

So, at Operation Noah we have been working on the development of some targeted education resources for teaching and learning aimed at young people in secondary and sixth form education and in church youth groups.

We want these free resources to ...

• address the learning and development needs of students and their teachers;

• be engaging, interactive and to combine scientific, religious, philosophical,

  personal, social, health and career related content;

• pay attention to children’s mental health, emotional and pastoral support needs -

  given their understandable concerns about their future world;

and

• to recognise the changing learning environment in schools and colleges including

  the growing popularity of philosophy and planned introduction of natural science options for study.

We have engaged with some fantastic scientists, teachers and youth leaders as we have begun to develop resources that match these aims.

Now, we are inviting your feedback on where we have arrived!

We have one short, straightforward feedback form (on the front page of this website) through which you can give us your invaluable professional evaluation of any of the five resources we have developed so far. We are seeking your review and that doesn’t necessarily require that you have used one of the resources with young people.

See our “Your Choice of Free Resources” blog post for details of all five resources.

• Operation Noah is a registered Christian charity (number 1138101) working with the Church to inspire action on the climate crisis. We are faith-motivated and believe that the climate and nature crises raise questions that go to the heart of our Christian faith. Science-informed, Operation Noah believe that faith and science should complement each other, and we see no conflict between the two. We are hope-inspired and our Christian hope gives us confidence to take action on the climate and nature crises, even if success is not always guaranteed or even likely. One of the UK’s first faith-based climate charities, Operation Noah was established in 2004 as a Christian response to the climate crisis.