1. What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?

2023 marked the very beginning of the Youth Biodiversity Collective. We developed, designed, and launched our website at www.youthbiodiversitycollective.org. We gained five advisory board members over the course of the year and we received our first donation this year as well. We have not used any of the money we have collected, but we plan to use our funding primarily to cover our operation expenses, such as our website domain and hosting in the coming year. We launched our community science program, powered by INaturalist. Over 171 biodiversity observations were collected through our iNaturalist project and a collective of over 131 individuals identified and confirmed the species of these observations. 

2. What challenges did you face during 2023? What did your Collective learn? How did you change or grow? 

During 2023, our Collective noticed that scheduling issues often prevented many of our board members from being able to meet. Our collective has learned the importance of scheduling meetings earlier and more often. In the upcoming year, we plan on using scheduling softwares more to complete our work. Our Collective is currently volunteer led and the limited capacity of our volunteers and advisors was challenging for our collective. Because of this, we plan to expand our volunteer outreach in the coming year.  

3. What are your plans for 2024? Anything exciting coming up?

The Youth Biodiversity Collective is looking forward to an exciting upcoming year. We plan to collaborate with existing environmental and climate nonprofits to increase our programming related to biodiversity and nature based solutions. We plan to have regular advisory board meetings. We’re also looking forward to the launch of a mentoring program for college students and young adults interested in pursuing a career in biodiversity conservation. We plan to expand our outreach to new communities of influence and hope to expand our volunteer recruitment over the coming year. We plan to expand our digital outreach on social media and grow our following online.