A panel entitled “A Brighter Future: Uniting the kids media industry on climate literacy” pulled double duty on Sunday: it was the first session of Kidscreen Summit 2025 in San Diego, California, and it also closed the circle on a story that began at the 2024 Summit. 

At last year’s Summit, This Is Planet Ed—an initiative of Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit The Aspen Institute aimed at educating youth about climate change and engaging them in building a more sustainable world—put out a call for kids content pitches that reflect what it calls the “four essential principles of climate change”. 

Developed in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy and “kidified” so they could be understood by young audiences, these four principles are simple and straightforward, says Laura Schifter (pictured), a senior fellow with This is Planet Ed. The principles are: “Earth is our home. It’s getting hotter because of us. It’s changing now and impacting us. But together, we can make the changes we need for a brighter future.”

More than 200 content producers submitted pitches in response to the presentation. After evaluating the entries, a panel of judges — including “Science Guy” Bill Nye and Gary Knell, senior advisor of media and social impact at Boston Consulting Group — awarded the organization’s support, including some funding, to seven projects. 

Coming full circle at this year’s Summit, the seven winning projects were introduced during an opening panel that featured Knell and Schifter as speakers. They are: 

• Earth is Home — created and directed by Livia Beasley of Pixel & Pebble. Based on the song “Cups (When I’m Gone)” from the movie Pitch Perfect, this music video features three teens “clapping back” against climate change by taking small actions such as turning off lights. 
• Eco Música — created by Dr. Jose Morey, Jeff Fine, CJ Zepeda, Marc Sanchez, Ken Nishimoto and Nick Danzi, and produced by Ad Astra Media. This cartoon tells the story of a young boy living in a desolate landscape who encounters a River Spirit. Taking the form of a salamander, the spirit recounts how people used to live in harmony with the earth. 
• Lila Goes Viral — created by Fluffy Cloud’s Erica Rabner & Robby LeDoux. This live-action project follows what happens after a teenager gains internet fame, and how she uses her platform to spread messages about environmental awareness. 
• Planet Wow — created by Meredith Halpern-Ranzer and Mindy Thomas from Tinkercast. This project from the team behind the Wow in the World podcast aims to inspire families to explore the world in search of geocaches. 
• Solar Punks — created by Lindsey Owen. In this animated short, time-travelling heroes in a talking bus journey from their utopian future back to the present day, to help kids find solutions to current ecological problems.
• What Happened to the Fireflies? — created by Anthony Frasier, ABF Creative. In the podcast, a brother and sister investigate the mystery of why fireflies disappeared from their city. 
• Yo, Zeno! — created by Park Star Media’s Nak Yong Choi and Young Park, and written by Yunah Chung. A runaway space prince has to stop his clueless uncle from causing ecological damage on Earth in this anime-style toon. 

Speaking to Kidscreen after the session, Schifter described these seven winning projects as “very unique pieces of content [that] demonstrate how these principles can be leveraged,” proving that creatives “can think differently about how to include climate-change content, in terms of a show or a storyline, or just even embedding solutions in characters’ worlds to normalize things like solar energy, electric cars or composting.”

In addition to the seven projects — which will be making their official debuts at an Aspen Institute event in April — This is Planet Ed also introduced a live-action comedy series for tweens and teens called This is Cooler: Miami!. Its creator, Susie Jaramillo (an Encantos Media storyteacher) had been working with the organization outside of the pitch competition, and a pilot episode has already earned over five million YouTube views. The series stars Gloria Estefan as a winking City of Miami Beach — a city that has been heating up due to climate change. Teens performing the “Climate Songa” (to the tune of “Do the Conga”) show some of the negative effects of a warmer city and demonstrate solutions to help reverse climate change.

In working with the creatives on these projects — most of which will have assets viewable on YouTube — This is Planet Ed learned some lessons about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to developing climate-based content. Now it’s sharing those lessons with a Toolkit for Climate Storytelling released Monday (February 10). This 36-page guide offers examples, shares strategies and communications approaches, and points out some pitfalls to avoid when addressing climate-related topics, such as merely pointing out problems and not offering solutions. 

“A lot of climate information that’s out there right now is doom and gloom, and that can leave kids feeling anxious,” said Schifter. “The concept of connecting problems to solutions can help children build understanding and also feel like there’s something that we can do.” She adds that it’s important to present children with the idea that nature isn’t separate from us; we are part of it. And that while individual actions matter, working together matters even more.

“There’s a lot of content out there that really focuses on this concept of taking care of nature, but doesn’t explain the fact that we need to take care of nature because nature is good, and also because nature takes care of us. It’s this concept of mutual care that sometimes is missing from the content or even the way that we talk about it, like ‘saving the earth.’ Well, why are we saving the earth? It’s not the earth as other. It’s because Earth is our home.” 

Kidscreen Summit 2025 runs until Wednesday, February 12.