In the classroom, partnerships add up to more resilient futures
As weather patterns are changing across Jordan, communities are increasingly facing the impacts of flash floods and heatwaves in their daily lives. For students and teachers in vulnerable locations, understanding these risks goes beyond the classroom curriculum; it means knowing how to stay safe, how to read and interpret weather information, and how to translate knowledge into action when weather conditions change.
In response, Mercy Corps’ climate resilience project, Tabeaa, under the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, partnered with Arabia Weather’s educational arm, Ard Academy and the Ministry of Education. This partnership was grounded in evidence gathered through the Climate Resilience Measurement for Communities (CRMC) framework, implemented by Tabeaa, which pointed to a lack of practical information helping parents and teachers understand risk and respond safely when extreme weather strikes. The "Climate Champions" school-based initiative was established to close this awareness gap.
The partnership combined Ard Academy's expertise in environmental education, Mercy Corps' understanding of local climate resilience needs and community engagement, and the Ministry of Education's support in facilitating access to schools and coordinating implementation. Together, the partnership delivered lasting results and showed how private sector collaboration can complement community-based resilience efforts.
From awareness to everyday practices
Schools were a natural entry point. Students carry information home in a way few other channels can; a student who understands a weather warning can share it with their family, and a teacher who regularly discusses weather changes helps make preparedness part of the school routine. Through this approach, awareness becomes more than a one-time message; it becomes a habit that reaches households and ripples out across wider school communities.
Our awareness as students is very important. My knowledge means learning for a large number of people around me.
student from Mlaih, 15 year old, male
The sessions carried that same logic into the classroom. Interactive discussions, storytelling, and scenario-based exercises helped students connect climate information to their own surroundings, building an understanding of risk and safe behavior rather than a list of facts to remember. Teachers noticed the difference this variety made, with 97% describing students as engaged during the sessions and 94% rating the sessions very useful in raising climate risk awareness. That confidence carried weight because of the collaboration with Ard Academy, which brought technical expertise and credibility to the messages. 89% of teachers reported increased confidence in the accuracy of the information delivered to students as a result of the partnership, while Tabeaa's connections with local stakeholders enabled coordination within schools, reaching 289 students and teachers across eight schools in Azraq, Dieban, Mlaih, and Wadi Musa. Students echoed that same confidence themselves, with 91% reporting a clear intention to apply what they learned, from social media awareness posts to sharing safety messages with families and peers.
The same logic carried through as to how the intervention approached sustainability. Schools were equipped with interactive weather boards (fig .2), giving students and teachers a regular touchpoint to observe weather data and connect forecasts to preparedness. Today, those boards are a permanent fixture of school life. In the final three weeks before the end of the academic year, schools logged 15 board updates, a reflection of how much students' value information when it becomes tangible. Teachers echoed that shift, highlighting high levels of student engagement and a growing commitment to embedding weather awareness into everyday school routines. By bringing weather information into the school space, the boards helped move students from passive recipients of information to active participants in it, a culture of engagement built to outlast the activity itself.
The case for cross sector partnership
Climate Champions illustrates what cross-sector collaboration can achieve when partner capabilities are treated as complementary rather than transactional, with each actor contributing to what the other cannot easily deliver independently.
That value was evidence-led from the outset, anchoring the partnership in a locally identified climate resilience needs rather than a predefined activity. Mercy Corps and Ard Academy then co-designed the approach jointly, rather than one party delivering a ready-made concept, pairing local resilience evidence with technical expertise in environmental education to produce a solution that was both scientifically sound and genuinely engaging for students.
"What NGOs do is something money cannot easily buy, which is community support. We have the technical depth in weather and climate. When you combine both, you have real impact." - Faris Shaban, General Manager, Arabia Weather
That approach depended on an enabling environment to reach students at scale. Early collaboration between Mercy Corps and the Ministry of Education made it possible to integrate the initiative into schools, positioning Climate Champions within existing educational structures rather than as a standalone activity.
"Weather data is only valuable if it reaches the people who actually need it. Arabia Weather's mission is to make climate information useful for the community, not just governments and businesses. NGOs like Mercy Corps help us do that, and that makes these partnerships a natural fit for our strategy." - Faris Shaban, General Manager, Arabia Weather.
Effective partnership is not simply a matter of convening different organizations; it is the deliberate combination of evidence, expertise, and shared ownership to design solutions that respond to genuine community needs.