IISD Next: Campus Workshop Series on Sustainability

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is committed to supporting youth advocates and analysts as they prepare for careers in sustainable development. As part of that effort, IISD hosts a dedicated campus workshop series every academic year, which is designed for a university student audience and is conducted fully online. The workshop series is fully interactive, and prospective students can sign up for workshops specific to their world regions and time zones. 

The workshops can be taken either together as a series or as individual workshops. Our programming is completely free of charge, and students who complete all four workshops are awarded a certificate that they can use for their CV. The courses are planned and delivered by IISD’s Youth Engagement Coordinator, Emily Kroft.

How to Register:

The IISD-Next certificate series 2023–24 registration is now closed. Thank you for your interest in the workshop series. If you would like to be made aware when registration is open for future workshop series or future IISD-Next series, please fill out the form at the following link:

Sign-up to know when registration opens in the future!

All sessions will be presented with live automated translated captions into the following languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telagu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese. Here's how to turn live captions on when using Zoom.

Workshop Topics

Past editions of the campus workshop series have included four workshops on the following topics: Policy Engagement, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Water, and Green Economies. Subsequent editions may cover different topics, depending on student feedback and the latest trends in sustainability. 

The policy engagement workshop provides instruction and insight into how young sustainability enthusiasts can better engage directly with policy at varying levels of government and see more concrete changes as a result of their activism. 

Our second workshop provides a deep dive into the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The workshop examines the different SDGs and their underlying targets, explains how these SDGs are structured and why, outlines their strengths and weaknesses, and provides an introduction to online tools that can be used to hold our governments accountable to their commitments. 

The Water workshop covers the link between science and policy using water as an area of focus. Water is an important topic of work for us at IISD because we are home to the IISD-Experimental Lakes Area. In this session, we will cover how science can form a basis for policy-level decision making around freshwater resources.

The final workshop on green economies focuses on hot-button topics in sustainability discourse, such as eco-labelling and circular economies, to give students a better understanding of what these terms mean, what their nuances are, and what they look like in practice.

What Our Participants Say

We are constantly learning from our participants and value their feedback deeply. Hear from a few of them below:

“The session was very beneficial in the sense that it focused on active ways to understand how to make change, at what level, all the while identifying the risks associated. Thank you.”

“The course exceeded my expectations. Please keep up the good work and educate more youths. Thank you again and good luck with your future work.”

“Emily [Kroft] was really polite and pleasant. Professional and respectful delivery of the content. She acknowledged the diversity of the group and made the most of everyone's different experiences in life that enriched the delivery of the information provided. I learned so much! Thank you.”

More Information

To schedule a workshop or learn more about our program, please contact our Youth Engagement coordinator, Emily Kroft, at ekroft@iisd.ca.

Below, learn more about our other work on youth engagement, including a series of digital stories developed together with young leaders that directly confront the realities of our present and our future.

Support IISD Next

We need your help to reach more youth and give them the tools they need to be heard! Give now and empower the next generation to lead the way to a sustainable future.

IISD Next is made possible in part by Wawanesa Insurance.