HEART Force: Students help solve community problems

Across Colorado, HEART Force — the Hazard Education, Awareness, and Resilience Task Force — has been transforming how communities think about disaster preparedness. At its core is a simple idea: communities become more resilient when young people are trusted to help build solutions for floods, wildfires, drought, and climate change. 

Katya Schloesser, a resilience educator with the CIRES Center for Education, Engagement, and Evaluation (CEEE), leads the HEART Force program. She is passionate about community-engaged learning and creating opportunities for students to participate in meaningful problem-solving. 

Schloesser and CIRES CEEE acting director Carrie McDougall recently presented about HEART Force at the 51st Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop in Broomfield, Colorado. Their featured panel, “Disaster Risk Reduction From the Heart,” featured students, a teacher, and an emergency manager from Gunnison, Colorado. 

“It was an incredible opportunity to have students on stage sharing their passion with an international conference of hazard researchers and practitioners. HEART Force students shared the power of engaging youth as partners in resilience planning,” said Schloesser.

Gunnison, a small mountain community of about 6,500 residents, faces risks from floods, wildfire, and drought. Schloesser and the HEART Force team partnered with Gunnison High School teacher and volunteer firefighter Krystal Brown, who connected students with local emergency managers, planners, and community leaders. 

These community partners issued challenge letters asking students to help address local resilience needs.  

"They [the students] looked at me and said, 'This is real? No one has ever trusted us with something like this before,'" Brown said. 

Rather than simply teaching students about hazards, the program empowers them to work alongside community members to identify problems and develop solutions.

One student-led project hosted a bilingual community game night focused on hazard awareness. Students arranged childcare, translated materials, and served tacos prepared by a local immigrant family-owned business. The event attracted more than 100 community members. 

Another student-led event  focused on wildfire preparedness. During Gunnison's "Night of Lights" holiday event, they hosted a booth as neighbors gathered around fire pits on Gunnison’s Main Street. Students also walked their neighborhoods and talked about wildfire risk with their neighbors

Many of Krystal’s students in her classes  are bilingual, and their work with HEART Force helped connect immigrant families with accessible preparedness information. In the process, students became trusted messengers between science, emergency management, and the community.

For Gunnison’s emergency manager, HEART Force changed how he views youth engagement. 

"Before HEART Force, I was talking to students," he said. "Now I'm talking with them." He discovered that students can help build trust in communities where barriers often exist. Students break down barriers. They engage with communities and build trust."

The impact extends beyond community resilience. It changes how students see themselves. 

"I didn't think of myself as a scientist," one student said. "I thought science was chemistry, and I wasn't good at that." Through HEART Force, she discovered new interests, explored environmental issues, and began envisioning a future career protecting vulnerable ecosystems. "I found something I was passionate about."

HEART Force is built on the belief that resilience is about more than infrastructure. Environmental literacy, social connections, and trust all play a critical role in helping communities prepare for and recover from disasters.

Whether restoring wetlands, reducing wildfire risk, engaging immigrant communities, mitigating pine beetle impacts, presenting at climate summits, or organizing preparedness events, HEART Force students are demonstrating that resilience is not something communities build for young people — it is something communities build with them. 

"Youth are the future of the Earth," one student said. "We need to help them be aware and take care of the planet."