Youth, Climate Justice and the SDGs
Climate justice, accountability, frontline realities, and youth agency.
Applications closed · Scholars admitted · 1 August to 25 September 2026
RSA's flagship 8-week online programme for youth leadership, climate learning, and community-rooted action.
The cohort brings together young leaders ages 18-35 from across regions to move from climate justice and circular systems to food, energy, policy advocacy, and a final community project showcase.
The Solar Cohort is not a conventional online course. It is a guided learning journey where participants connect climate justice, systems thinking, renewable energy, food systems, governance, and policy advocacy to the realities of their own communities.
Each week combines expert input, facilitated workshops, reflection, and applied work. By the end of the cohort, participants present a practical action plan, policy brief, community project proposal, or other agreed final project.
Solar energy represents one of the most accessible, equitable, and scalable pathways toward a just transition. Solar power is both practical and symbolic: it delivers clean, decentralised energy while embodying illumination, renewal, and collective progress.
Eight connected weeks moving from foundations to applied community action.
Participants learn through weekly expert sessions, interactive workshops, guided reflection, peer exchange, and practical deliverables. The emphasis is not only on knowing more, but on becoming more capable of acting with clarity, evidence, and community accountability.
Climate justice, accountability, frontline realities, and youth agency.
Rethinking production, consumption, waste, and shared responsibility.
Exploring how power, access, education, and gender shape climate outcomes.
Land, food security, climate resilience, and ecological health.
Designing practical, community-rooted responses to local climate challenges.
Energy access, justice, governance, and the politics of transition.
Turning evidence into policy asks, campaigns, coalitions, and institutional engagement.
Presenting final projects, receiving feedback, and joining the RSA alumni network.
Certificate eligibility updates automatically in the scholar portal based on lecture attendance, quiz completion, and the compulsory final week.
The cohort particularly values underrepresented voices, first-generation learners, and participants working in communities already facing climate disruption.
A learning experience shaped by RSA facilitators, guest experts, and global youth leaders.
The Solar Cohort is built around applied learning. Scholars do not only attend lectures. They work in groups, identify real community needs, and shape project ideas that can be carried beyond the programme.
Graduates move into the RSA alumni community, where they continue connecting through follow-up workshops, peer exchange, and future programme opportunities.
Alumni profiles, scholar spotlights, and cohort stories can be expanded here as the public archive grows.
Scholars are placed into project groups that become their working circles during the cohort. Each group collaborates on deliverables, shared learning, and the final presentation.
As the live system matures, this public section can showcase group names, mentors, and project themes.
Weekly updates, mentor reflections, lecturer stories, and scholar highlights help the public follow the cohort in real time.
The published update cards above are already designed to grow into article-style cohort stories with cover images and expandable content.
FAQ
Quick answers for applicants considering the Solar Cohort and wider RSA learning pathways.
Applications for this cohort are closed. Admitted students can access onboarding, schedules, quizzes, messages, and assignments through the portal.
Log In to Solar Portal