Alex Ratcliff is a CEE alumni now working with PAE Consulting Engineers, Inc. They have an event starting this week that would integrate well with student groups, staff teams, and classes. They’ve partnered with Ecochallenge.org and are rolling out the Youth Climate Ecochallenge sponsored by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The premise is to provide free online sustainability education in an engaging manner. Users join a team and track their actions on a series of daily challenges chosen by the user and based on Drawdown principles – actions such as eating a locally sourced meal, avoiding refined sugar, and replacing manual thermostats with programmable options. Ecochallenge tracks the number of points you accrue per day based on the challenges you select and complete. PAE has had inter-office Eco Challenges for the last two years, and it’s very informative even for people well-versed in sustainability.

The challenge runs April 15^th – May 15^th in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day. They are encouraging students, educators, youth leaders, or parents who may be interested in participating to create a team, as this is a competitive race to make climate positive changes in our community. For educators, this is a great opportunity to create a team for a class and credit students for participating in the challenge.

Go here to learn more about the challenge. You can also sign up to join there.