Gabi and Kim: Champions for The CLEO Institute

Gabriela began her journey in climate advocacy with The CLEO Institute in middle school: 7th grade to be exact.  For the last 6 years she has been learning from the multiple people and programs that have given her the confidence to speak to local commissioners, Florida state representatives in Tallahassee, corporate players, local media, and her peer groups about important climate knowledge and the policy that is needed by those in power to try move the needle on a world in the midst of a climate crisis. 

Founded in 2010, The CLEO Institute is the only nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization in Florida exclusively dedicated to climate education, advocacy, and engagement. Building community resilience and adaptive capacity require an informed, engaged, and prepared public. Therefore, CLEO works with governmental, business, academic, and community leaders to advocate for long-term and inclusive solutions.

Gabi has benefitted from so many of CLEO's core programs that include, but are not limited to:

•CLEO Speakers Network: training people to become confident climate speakers

•GenCLEO Youth Network: supporting a network of young people who have successfully gotten eight municipalities to declare a climate emergency.

•Statewide Campaigns: activating statewide campaigns like the Melting Florida statues to increase climate crisis awareness

CLEO engages over 15,000 people through programs, trainings, webinars, etc. AND, because so many of their programs are free, they continue to receive more participants every year.

Gabi and I are SO excited to have a CLEO Champion page this year for you to donate to: We hope you will find it in your heart (and wallet ;) to give what you can to help us reach our fundraising goal. 

Not to sound cliche, but it takes a village to educate our youth, and we are so grateful to have had The CLEO Institute as part of our Miami village!