GREEN AMBASSADORS: SCIENCE, ROLE-PLAYING, AND COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION

Environmental crises will overwhelmingly impact Millennials and Generation Z. Most are aware of this reality and enthusiastic about finding and promoting policy solutions. However, many youths also lack the communication and collaboration skills necessary to implement change in their communities. The Green Ambassadors program is a collaboration between Science Voices (a nonprofit focused on improving science education) and a political science course at Arizona State University (ASU). The program provides space for students to practice deliberation and policy-making in an online role-playing game and then implement their own proposal to address an environmental problem in their community.

We will report on the results of the pilot program we ran during Summer 2020, which included students from ASU (Phoenix, Arizona, USA) and Khairun University (KU - Ternate, North Maluku, Indonesia). ASU students participated as part of an online political science course. KU students were recruited by Science Voices. Students at both universities were assigned to fictitious nations and addressed analogous real-world environmental and political challenges through diplomacy between nations with various objectives. This summer’s cohort dealt with trade relationships, climate change, and plastic pollution. Students at both universities informally shared personal experiences with these topics and collaborated on related policy options. KU students additionally developed a proposal for addressing a local problem of importance (identified by the students as plastic pollution) and were provided with crowdfunded materials to implement their proposal.

We will discuss the experiences of US and Indonesian students, as well as the implementation and results of the KU local project. We will additionally discuss developing this program as a collaborative space for students from the Global North and South to partner and co-mentor each other in developing local solutions to global challenges.