Resources to support sustained engagement in climate action
Over the course of the past month, I had the tremendous pleasure of facilitating an online cohort of ACTT’s Climate Ambassadors Program. This was the first cohort of the program since the recent elections and also the first time I have led the full program. On Thursday evenings, I would leave my family at dinner and head upstairs to a corner of my bedroom that sidelines as a home office space. I’d turn on my computer, start up the zoom link, and, within minutes, faces would fill my screen as participants in the cohort signed on from throughout Maine.
Over the course of five sessions, we dove into effective climate communication, basic climate science, emissions sources and climate impacts, solutions from the international level to the local level, and we supported each other in mapping our unique contribution to solutions.
Our final session was entirely dedicated to considering how to sustain ourselves in engagement with climate solutions. Incredibly, this meeting took place at the exact same time that the Active Hope ACTT-facilitated bookclub was meeting and discussing the same topic. As the ambassadors’ cohort dropped into the relationships built over the prior four sessions to share very openly regarding challenges each participant was experiencing while engaging in climate action during this particular moment of federal upheaval, I imagined the bookclub participants doing the same. I felt buoyed by the sharing taking place, the trusted relationships formed in the process, and the resources being discussed.
It struck me that others might also be contemplating how best to sustain engagement right now, in the face of so much challenge. I wanted to share the resources explored in the Ambassadors Program, in the chance that they might be off-service to others. Links and an overview of each shared resource follow.
Joanna Macy, The Work That Reconnects, and the “We Are the Great Turning” podcast
Themes and Reflection Questions
