The Southern College Climate Gathering

Reflections from Amy Okonkwo, Sunrise UNC Hub Coordinator & Southern College Climate Gathering Organizer at CCN

On February 7, 2025, over 60 students from across the South found themselves at UNC-Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for the College Climate Gathering (CCG) hosted by CCN and Sunrise UNC. Students had the opportunity to engage in trainings, panels, and workshops intended to build their organizing capabilities and amass skills they would be able to take back to their universities and schools to be able to build effective campaigns. Throughout the weekend, students built cross-campus connections with each other, joining the network of social justice organizers that lies at the heart of all meaningful movements and campaigns.

From outreach, programming, logistics, and intersections between these three organizational endeavors, the Southern CCG was the product of months of planning on the parts of CCN staff members and members of Sunrise UNC. The outreach team dedicated themselves to representing as much of the Southern United States as possible, from HBCUs, to public universities, to private universities. The programming team carefully coordinated the weekend’s trainings, workshops, panelists, and the spanning contents of the weekend to ensure that attendees left not only having learned necessary theory and skills related to building power, but also having bonded with the trainers, the CCG team, and fellow attendees. Throughout the weekend and for months prior, the logistics team was committed to ensuring that the gathering operated like a well-oiled machine, organizing food, housing, facility and supplies bookings, and more.

Uniting students from 12 states and D.C., the planning behind the Southern CCG came together in a beautiful mosaic of attendees diving into the skills and knowledge that motivate building power for change, while simultaneously growing together as organizers and, more simply, friends.