CLEO(Climate Leadership Engagement Opportunities) Institute has been educating and mobilizing communities to demand climate action, ensuring a safe, just, and healthy environment for all since their founding in 2010 by high school science teacher Caroline Lewis. Climate and environmental justice are at the core of everything they do. CLEO is the only women-led nonpartisan nonprofit in Florida dedicated exclusively to climate education, advocacy, and engagement. While CLEO considers all Floridians to be on the front line of the climate crisis, they prioritize programming for those most disproportionately affected: low-income earners, historically marginalized communities, BIPOC communities, women, and youth. Programs stretch across Florida’s largest counties, Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough, Leon, and Orange – all facing acute sea-level rise, extreme heat, saltwater intrusion, intensifying hurricanes, and inland flooding that threaten infrastructure, water supplies, and public health.
When it comes to climate action in Florida, few organizations are as rooted in community and impact as CLEO Institute. With a bottom-up and top-down approach, CLEO bridges the gap between residents, local government, and academia to ensure community voices shape climate policy. Its core programs – Climate Resilient Schools, genCLEO, Empowering Resilient Women, and the CLEO Speakers Network – reach thousands each year. CLEO has helped secure a climate emergency declaration in Leon County, trained over 50 youth climate speakers, and led listening sessions in Tampa that influenced the city’s Climate Action & Equity Plan. It also launched House on Fire!, a youth-led podcast on climate and activism, and Let’s Talk Climate, a video series where young people interview grassroots organizers and public officials. From classrooms to council chambers, CLEO is building a climate-literate, civically engaged Florida, ready to lead.
January 2024, for the second year in a row, CLEO Institute brought more than 250 of its genCLEO youth from across the state to the Florida Capitol to advocate for clean energy policy; the largest youth delegation ever sent for that purpose! (Photo courtesy of CLEO Institute.)