How does a concerned community member effectively lead local climate projects? The Climate Change Leadership Academy (2CLA) encourages helps folks do just that. Co-run by Vital Communities and the Upper Valley Adaptation Workgroup, 2CLA offers in-person and virtual meetings, guest speakers, group discussion, a project development workbook, and collaborative work time. The group explores climate change science, mitigation, adaptation, and migration – all with an eye towards equity and lived experience. Cohort members also have the change to develop their project design and leadership skills in order to lead successful community action. The current class includes 22 Upper Valley residents ranging in age from early-twenties to mid-seventies. This post reviews Session 5; see the series here.
2CLA Program Manager Alana Redden writes:
2018 flooding in Hartford Village after microburst.
We had Session 5 of 2CLA on November 15. We had 21 of our 22 cohort members there! The topic was how to talk about climate change. I recorded two conversations with community members prior to the meeting. The first was Nat Wood, who is a student at Keene State studying Sustainability, Inequity Studies, and Restorative Justice. In my conversation with them we discussed how to use restorative justice principles in hard conversations and how to think about climate conversations as collaborations and not competitions, and we ran through some real-life scenarios of hard climate conversations that the 2CLA 2022 members shared.
The second conversation was with Pete Shreve, who does IT at a local Hanover school but has a background in filmmaking. He and I discussed storytelling, capturing an audience, and how to keep people engaged in your story by using relatable framing. The 2CLA folks seemed to have rich breakout group discussions as they always do, and it seemed that talking to one another helped them relate the recorded convos with their own climate work.
We had a special addition to this session from Alana Macken (the amazing Dartmouth student who has helped planned 2CLA 2022). She gave an overview of social media, including how it might help folks with their projects in general. She then briefly ran through the different SM platforms, which demographics use them the most, and what they offer the user. As you may remember we have a very wide age range within the cohort, so Alana and I figured it might be helpful to do this overview for some of the folks who have been introduced to SM later in life.
After that, we moved on to project work. We are going to do a “lightning round” next session that will consist of each participant sending me a video of them giving an “elevator pitch” of their project in 60 seconds or less. We will then play these videos during Session 6 to give people the opportunity to provide their peers with feedback and ideas (only positive feedback will be shared publicly, any constructive feedback will be shared privately). So our project time during Session 5 was largely dedicated to giving people time to begin discussing and writing these elevator pitches. This also aligned well with the broader theme of the week: how to effectively communicate about all things climate.
Feedback from the session has definitely been positive. As usual, everyone loved their time in small groups either discussing or working together. The themes of this constructive feedback can be summed up with this one quote from one participant: “I always wish for more time together, but I also know that it’s just not realistic. But I really can’t think of anything I would change. Except that I don’t want this to end! Let’s go for another 2 months, haha!” Next week is our final session of the season. But we will be having an in-person graduation/project check-in at the end of March, and everyone seems excited about that!
