Climate change education in schools and universities tends to focus on environmental facts, whilst little room is given to inner dimensions of change and to collective ation. The emotional and mental wellbeing of students, as well as the values, skills and mindsets that are needed for addressing societal challenges and fostering transformation are hardly considered. Consequently, children and youth are increasingly experiencing climate anxiety, associated overwhelm and denial. 

The new project CLARITY (Transformative Climate Resilience Education for Children and Youth: From Climate Anxiety to Resilience, Creativity and Regeneration) will address these challenges by (1) enhancing educators’ skills for dealing with climate anxiety and nurturing inner resilience of learners, and (2) supporting more integrative approaches that link the inner and outer dimensions of transformation.

The aim of the project is to better equip children and youth educators to provide social, emotional, ethical and trauma-informed education that supports climate resilience across individual, collective, and system levels. This does not only involve enhancing the emotional and mental wellbeing of children and youth and building their capacities as transformative change-agents. It also involves creating a field of change through more regenerative cultures and communities of practice needed to address climate change and other societal crises in the long run.

Project partners include: Lund University (IIIEE and Lucsus), One Resilient Earth, REAL School Budapest, Climate Creativity, Legacy17, and The Vision Works, and associated partners are the UNESCO Chair of Futures Literacy at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences and the Learning Planet Institute.

From IIIEE, the project is led by researcher Bernadett Kiss. The project will run from October 2023 to March 2026.

Learn more about the project here.