Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation (CELF)
Our mission: To establish sustainability as an integral part of
every child's K-12 learning experience.

Preparing Future Citizens and Leaders

Education not only informs, it can stretch and reshape minds with new ideas. It has the power to transform students themselves into agents of change, helping to create a sustainable future for us all.

Education for sustainability is essential for today’s students to make wise decisions for their own well-being and for the good of the planet and all its inhabitants. CELF provides sustainability education programs to prepare students with the critical thinking skills and intellectual framework to face the most critical issues of the 21st century.

At the college level, many traditional fields of study have evolved to offer students the knowledge they’ll need to become part of the sustainability revolution. CELF believes sustainability education must begin earlier in students’ academic life. We focus on K-12 as formative years for shaping thinking, attitudes, values and behaviors.

Mission: Educating for Sustainability

CELF’s mission is to make sustainability education an integral part of every school’s curricula and culture, from kindergarten through high school. Our approach is comprehensive, engaging students, teachers and administrators, parents, communities and businesses through professional development, consulting services, and experiential programs.

We believe that it is as important for students to recognize the interconnectedness of natural and human-built systems as to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.  Once students grasp the connections between a stable economy, a healthy environment and equitable social systems, and their role as global citizens, they are successfully launched into an already more sustainable world – a world that they are empowered to protect and enjoy.

“In the coming decades, the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy — our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live accordingly. This means that ecoliteracy must become a critical skill… and should be the most important part of education at all levels…”   – Fritjof Capra, PhD

New York League of Conservation Voters is proud to honor CELF for our commitment to the environment in Westchester County. READ MORE