The Resilience Youth Network’s is a non-profit organization of students and early-career professionals pursuing careers in disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation to increase the resilience of society and its built environment to physical hazards. Our mission is to “Enhance climate resilience through educational programs, community building initiatives, and professional and leadership development opportunities.”
Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. In the context of climate change, resilience is the ability of a system or community to withstand and recover from the effects of climate change. A system could be a building, a water utility, or an ecosystem. RYN focuses primarily on resilient systems in the built environment.
The goal of the Resilience Youth Network is to develop the next generation of leaders in the fields of resilience and natural hazard adaptation. We recognize that underrepresented groups often not present in decision-making processes due to systemic inequities and injustices. We also recognize that low-income people are often members of these same underrepresented groups and are among those most impacted by the effects of disasters. We are committed to promoting equal access to resources and opportunity in resilience career fields and decisions that institutions make to address these discrepancies.
RYN was founded on four pillars that guide everything that we do in our mission to develop the next generation of leaders in climate resilience.
We aim to create opportunities for members to learn about climate resilience in the public and private sectors, build new skills through GIS workshops, and learn from expert mentors.
We help our members develop their careers across the wide variety of fields that need climate resilience thought leadership (i.e., policy, engineering, science, finance, etc.)
We teach members how to advocate for climate resilience action and support their involvement with collaborations on real-world projects and contests.
We work to uplift underrepresented groups in climate resilience through leadership development, writing projects, and advocacy.
