Deadline: May 20, 2025

The New Leaders Initiative (NLI) is a program of Earth Island Institute, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. NLI provides programs that honor, support, and sustain young environmental leaders, including the national Brower Youth Awards and local events in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Brower Youth Awards are looking to recognize the leader of a group or an effort. While they will consider applicants who are implementing individual efforts, they tend to focus on leaders of groups and efforts.

Benefits

• Recipients receive a $3,000 cash prize, a short film produced about their work, a trip to participate in leadership development activities, flight, meals, and lodging accommodations.
• Post-event, Brower Youth Award winners join a wide network of over a hundred youth leaders across the world making a difference globally.

Eligibility

• Youth environmental change leaders ages 13 to 22 (as of the application deadline) living in North America (including Mexico, Canada, and U.S. territories).

Applicants are assessed on the following criteria:

• Outstanding Youth Leadership: You played the major leadership role in creating, organizing, and implementing your project or campaign(s).
• Issue & Approach: Your project applies fresh solutions and approaches to relevant environmental challenges.
• Project Impact, Scalability, & Replicability: Is the project’s impact significant? Can your work be used as a model for other communities or campuses?
• Charisma, Personal Commitment, & Trajectory: What draws you to this work? What would winning a Brower Youth Award mean to you?

Application

All applications must be completed and submitted online. Please notify us well in advance of the deadline if you foresee any problems with submitting an online application.

In addition to meeting award eligibility requirements and following all instructions to complete the online application, each applicant must submit:

• A photograph of yourself
• If you are a semifinalist, you will be asked for a letter of support from someone familiar with you and your environmental work (cannot be from a parent or guardian)

For more information, visit

To apply, click here