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What if environmental education wasn’t just about awareness but about action, careers, and community impact?

That’s the question behind Earth Scholars, an award-winning initiative now growing across North Devon.

Co-founded locally and delivered by Sustainable Business Resource CIC, Earth Scholars is rooted in a simple belief that climate education should feel relevant, empowering, and connected to real opportunity. For coastal and rural communities like ours, we have an opportunity to bridge the gap between education and meaningful work experience, ensuring that young people don’t just learn about the future of work but actively step into it with the skills, confidence, and local connections to thrive.

Understanding climate change matters, but awareness alone doesn’t drive change; people do. We transform that learning into action through collaborating with local organisations and providing mentorship to both our students and businesses. Through our practical placements, students gain the experience needed to become tomorrow’s environmental leaders.

Our work is built around three connected strands:

Earth Scholars

The core Earth Scholars programme equips young people with a strong foundation in:

• Climate Literacy
• Biodiversity & conservation
• Innovation
• Sustainable business practices

However, crucially, we also prepare them for their placements and for their future careers within the rapidly growing green economy. Helping them to develop transferable skills. And turn understanding into measurable impact.

Earth Ability

Through Earth Ability, we connect students with meaningful work placements and live sustainability projects. Our young people don’t just learn about climate action; they participate in it, taking real action and working with local organisations on short-term projects.

This creates:

• Practical skills
• Increased confidence
• Clearer career pathways
• Stronger links between education and local employers

 

The Earth Hub

Our flagship biodiversity space, the Earth Hub, based at North Devon College, brings students and volunteers together to actively improve local environments. It’s not a theoretical project. It’s visible, measurable, and hands-on. We can’t wait to share the progress later this summer.  In a region defined by its natural landscape, protecting and understanding that landscape must be central to how we educate the next generation.

North Devon has something powerful, a deep connection between community and environment but it also faces the same climate pressures affecting coastal and rural regions across the UK, from biodiversity loss to economic transition. Earth Scholars exists to ensure local young people are not just aware of those challenges, but equipped to innovate and lead solutions.

It’s Not Just for Students

Alongside our youth programmes, we also work with Devon-based businesses, delivering workshops, masterclasses and practical sustainability action planning and training.

Because climate action isn’t a single-sector issue.

It requires collaboration between:

• Education
• Employers
• Community groups
• Local organisations

 

The Team Behind Earth Scholars

Chloe Davis

Co-Founder, Earth Scholars

Chloe Davis is a sustainability advocate and programme founder focused on practical climate literacy, workforce development, and inclusive environmental education. As Co-Founder of Earth Scholars, she plays a central role in shaping the vision, direction, and delivery of programmes that connect learning with real-world environmental action.

Her work centres on making environmental education accessible, relevant, and empowering, particularly for young people navigating an uncertain future. Chloe is passionate about ensuring climate education moves beyond awareness to build confidence, skills, and tangible pathways into the green economy.

Chloe’s approach is grounded in the belief that North Devon has a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between education and meaningful work experience, enabling young people to step into emerging environmental roles with clarity, confidence, and local opportunity.

Her key focus areas include:

• Reframing climate action as an opportunity
• Designing education that links directly to employability and future careers
• Supporting young people to feel informed, capable, and motivated, not overwhelmed
• Embedding inclusivity and place-based learning into programme design

Through Earth Scholars, Chloe works closely with educators, businesses, community organisations, and delivery partners to co-create programmes that respond to local environmental challenges while building long-term regional capability.

She believes lasting environmental change starts at a local level with informed, confident communities equipped to protect the places they depend on and to shape a more regenerative future.

At home in North Devon, Chloe is a keen reader and lover of the outdoors. She is mum to three boys with another on the way very soon. In her spare time, she enjoys trying out a variety of hobbies, camping, adventuring and hiking with her family.

Martin Slocombe

Director, Sustainable Business Resource CIC

Martin supports strategic partnerships and business engagement across the initiative. Through Sustainable Business Resource CIC, he works with organisations to embed sustainability into long-term strategy and daily operations.

His focus includes:

• Sustainable business transformation
• Practical implementation of environmental best practice
• Cross-sector collaboration

Martin plays a key role in connecting education with enterprise, ensuring learning translates into action. Martin is an experienced strategic advisor and community-sector consultant with over 16 years of leadership experience supporting charities, CICs, and values- driven enterprises. He specialises in organisational stability, governance development, and cross-sector collaboration, working closely with boards and senior leadership teams to strengthen decision-making, improve operational resilience, and navigate periods of transition.

He provides consultancy to third-sector organisations and business steering groups, offering structured guidance on strategy, partnership development, and ecosystem mapping. His grounded approach supports leaders to gain clarity, manage complexity and build long-term organisational capacity.

At home in North Devon, Martin is a fair-weather kayaker. Has two grown-up sons who share his community spirit and both work in the healthcare profession.

 

Jess Carter

Director, Planet & People CIC

Jess works closely with schools, students and local partners to coordinate programmes and expand community involvement.

Her strengths include:

• Stakeholder engagement
• Programme delivery
• Building inclusive partnerships

Jess has a background in biology and conservation, alongside many years of experience training and inspiring others to live in ways that are more considerate of the Earth’s precious resources and protective of the natural world.

Education and training are at the heart of her work. She is passionate about supporting young people, communities, and leaders to take responsible and decisive action for the climate, translating environmental awareness into meaningful change.

With a strong connection to Devon and a flair for juggling multiple projects, Jess thrives on driving forward environmental initiatives and strengthening partnerships for collaborative climate action. Through Earth Scholars, she works with organisations to develop tailored sustainability packages that meet them where they are, supporting practical, achievable progress toward becoming more environmentally conscious and ecologically responsible.

Her approach is holistic and action-focused, including:

• Practical recommendations
• Action planning and implementation
• Connecting organisations with young people eager to develop green skills
• Identifying high-impact opportunities
• Supporting whole-organisation transformation at a sustainable pace

Jess believes this positive, innovative approach builds resilient and adaptable communities capable of facing future challenges together.

At home in Mid Devon, Jess lives on a smallholding and is a keen horsewoman. With young children just starting school, she takes every opportunity to encourage them to learn from and enjoy the outdoors. She loves adventure and can often be found exploring Devon’s coast and moors with her family.

She is excited to be part of a proactive initiative that enables people from all backgrounds to play their part in helping the natural world to thrive.

Our Long-Term Vision

Earth Scholars is already established within North Devon College and is expanding partnerships across schools, colleges, universities, community groups and local organisations. It’s about building long-term environmental capability within our region and ensuring North Devon’s future workforce is ready for the realities of a changing world.

If you’re an educator, employer, community leader, or simply someone who cares about the future of this region, we’d love to connect.

📩 martin@thesbr.org  | jess@thesbr.org | chloe@thesbr.org