Apply to Our Solar Fellowship!
**US ONLY**
What are we doing? The Solar Fellowship is a national constellation of high school youth leaders in the United States determined to achieve a sustainable future. They take ambitious actions against climate change by starting solar energy projects in their school districts. The mentoring team organizing the Fellowship have collectively saved their own schools over $25 million and offset over 90,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through such solar campaigns. For the 2018-2019 cycle, we are recruiting passionate high school students who are excited about social & environmental change and want to have a genuine impact on their local communities and the world. These visionaries will learn to raise student-based coalitions from scratch, grow them to span entire school districts, and spur peers to action. The Fellowship will provide the tools, knowledge, and skills to launch a solar campaign from start to finish. We offer a strongly networked community of young environmental activists and a team of mentors (mostly college-aged) who have had real successes starting their own solar projects.
Who are we looking for? High school students!
We are looking to groom future world leaders who have the grit, the courage, and the passion to do whatever it takes to help build a cleaner, greener, and more loving world. You don’t need any prior experience; we’re just looking for this drive.
Fellow Perks - Gain courage to start your journey as an ambitious activist. - Join a national network of student leaders who offer fun and community. - Receive mentorship and lifelong friends. - Learn activism tools that can apply to future campaigns and careers (media, campaign management, narrative formation, leadership development, budgeting, diplomacy, public speaking). - Save your school millions of dollars in energy savings to go back into the classroom. - Experience the joy of helping to solve one of the greatest challenges of our century. - Feel empowered, and empower others! This is our main goal of the program. You are building the future, and the power of youth to do so is endless
Fellowship Commitment The nature of founding a school solar campaign is counterintuitive to how other extracurriculars work. If you are selected for the fellowship, this project will take quite literally 1% of your time, and the best estimate we can give is ~1 hr/week. However, most of that 1% is highly concentrated into a string of sprints and bursts throughout the year that are both adventurous and intense. This is best explained through a graph. Starting a movement will also feel very much like this video. Some months you will be doing diplomacy in slow motion, and other months you will be rushing to recruit students, collect petition signatures, launch press releases, and speak to journalists all in the same day. (Don't worry if any of this seems out of your comfort zone; we will help you along the way!). You will also need as much optimism, discipline, and patience as you can muster because it's about playing the long game: Campaigns can last two to three years and even involve passing the torch down from successor to successor. Ready to apply? Click HERE. Application Timeline September 5: Call for applications open December 3: Applications due Frequently Asked Questions Can we apply as a group of friends / team / environmental club? Yes, and this is encouraged! In fact, all individuals who are accepted to the Fellowship will eventually have to grow their project out into a team or club coalition. What year in high school do I have to be? Any. Other questions? Please email "contact (at) solarfellowship.org"
