Join young people from around the country taking action for Earth Week!
Resources
The Activist Toolkit
From recruitment to leadership development, to grassroots organizing, to working with the media, this Activist Toolkit provides the basic tools to run successful events and winning campaigns.
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Outreach Toolkit
Amplify your Earth Week events with social media tags, graphics, and sample posts; a sample recruitment email; and a sample “Register Your Event” email.
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Media Toolkit
Sample media advisories, press statements, press releases and more to make sure your Earth Week event gets great media coverage!
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Social Media Toolkit
Sample social media posts, hashtags, and graphics to amplify your Earth Week events.
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Letters-to-the-Editor Toolkit
Letters to the editor (LTEs) are a great way to get easy media coverage for your campaign. This toolkit contains a how to, tips and sample Earth Week LTEs to submit to your local or campus newspapers.
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From Data to Change: Brand Audit Toolkit
Since 2017, #breakfreefromplastic has been organizing brand audits to hold the top corporate plastic polluters accountable. This guide will help you maximize the impact from brand audit data and use it to create your own long-term campaigns to end plastic pollution.
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2026 Leadership Award Winners
Protect Our Oceans Hearing, CALPIRG Students
Winner: Best Advocacy Event
Students from UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis attended a day-long public hearing held by the California Fish and Game Commission to speak in support of expanding marine protected areas in California. A total of 48 students attended and gave public comments, delivering more than 21,000 petition signatures collected over the past three years. All CALPIRG chapters from across the state helped recruit for the hearing. Special shout-out to the UCLA chapter for recruiting the most students!
Our Gulf Our Whale: Beach Cleanup & Action Day, Florida PIRG at the University of South Florida
Winner: Most Media Attention
Florida PIRG at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg hosted a community beach cleanup and press conference on Clearwater Beach with Sierra Club Florida and Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The event focused on threats to the critically endangered Rice’s whale and other marine wildlife, our coastal economy, and our quality of life from expanded offshore drilling in the Gulf, and the Administration’s attacks on the Endangered Species Act. More than 30 volunteers collected 163 pounds of trash that Gulf tides would have otherwise carried away. The event received three media hits, including this article in The Boca Raton Tribune!
MASSPIRG at UMass Amherst
Winner: Most Campaign Events
MASSPIRG at UMass Amherst held a dozen Youth Earth Week events, including an outdoor concert called “Jam for the Bees” to raise awareness for their campaign to restrict the use of seeds coated in bee-killing neonic pesticides. Three local bands played the concert (in bee-headbands!) and built a big buzz for the campaign. Other events included petitioning actions for the Save the Whales, Waste Is Out of Fashion, and Clean Energy campaigns, a “rubbish roundup” that collected 5 full bags of trash, a raffle to win a crochet whale, and a table at the Earth Day Extravaganza to educate the campus community about sustainability.
Partners:
About
Since Earth Day was founded in 1970, students have been on the forefront of change to protect our environment. Today, we face numerous environmental crises, from climate change, to air and water pollution, to the destruction of ecosystems critical to all life on Earth. That’s why young people are organizing events across the country to call for bold action to protect our environment and public health.
Youth Earth Week is a project of the Student PIRGs. For over 50 years the Student PIRGs have helped college students to get organized, mobilized and energized so they can continue to be on the cutting edge of positive change.
Learn more about the Student PIRGs at StudentPIRGs.org
