The Climate Action Training: Cool ‘Hood Champs program is aimed at increasing awareness of and addressing climate change in neighbourhoods. It was developed by the UBC Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP) and is jointly offered by CALP and the Centre for Community Engaged Learning.

The UBC Climate Action Mobilizers’ (CAM) consulted with Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) community to better understand how they are impacted by climate change at the Oppenheimer Park Extreme Heat Pop-up event. This event was developed in support of CLEAR and in partnership with Working Gear, UBC Sustainability Hub, and UBC Learning Exchange.

The Climate Action Mobilizers (CAM) team created two interactive, collaborative workshops for youth leaders at the Youth Space of South Surrey/White Rock with the objectives of surfacing the youth group and community’s needs; preparing youth leaders to consult with other community members such as seniors; and to facilitate the co-design of a community-wide creative lab. The culminating event for this workshop series was the implementation of an inclusive, co-designed creative lab that invited the Bakerview Park community to envision park improvements that will meet the needs of diverse park users. 

This event hosted by the UBC Climate Action Mobilizers and Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (B.E.S.T.) brought participants together for an experiential workshop facilitated by Kathi Camilleri (Metis/Cree and Irish ancestry). Paddling Together© focused on deepening participants’ understanding of traditional Indigenous values, and decolonizing perspectives around the concept of “community.”

Students and community members gathered for a community conversation that amplified and empowered Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) youth leadership and climate action. Diverse guest speakers shared lived experiences on belonging and intersectionality in relation to climate action and inspired conversations around inclusion.

This online event featured a four-person panel discussion with two speakers who have lived climate displacement experience, and two speakers who specialize in climate displacement community engagement and policy. The event concluded with a UBC Amnesty International letter-writing campaign to increase protection of climate displaced people. This fostered a better understanding of the collective responsibility and supports needed to address challenges related to climate change displacement.