webinar

Youth Leaders on Climate Justice

PAST EVENT
August 20, 2025

On August 20, GTY and the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy convened young changemakers and field leaders to discuss how environmental justice is deeply connected to social equity, the disproportionate impacts of climate change on marginalized communities, and the need for intersectional, community-driven solutions.

Watch recording

Top Takeaway

Youth climate leaders call for climate justice solutions that directly address systemic inequities, centering the experiences of marginalized and Global South communities.

How do they do it?

  • Activism empowers youth with a sense of agency and connection to their communities.
  • Storytelling, art, and inclusive communication sustain mental wellbeing and inspire collective action.
  • A sustainable climate future depends on bold policies and organizing rooted in love and justice and on fostering self-care, resilience, and keeping youth inspired throughout their lifelong leadership journeys.

Recording

More Takeaways

  1. Youth reject narrow or tokenized roles. They are ready to lead, rather than waiting for traditional hierarchies to validate them.
  2. Climate anxiety is pervasive but activism, artistic expression and community engagement can instill agency and hope.
  3. Climate justice requires addressing structural inequities that cause the impacts of climate change to be felt disproportionately by people in the global south, black, brown and working class people. Renewable energy solutions that incur human rights violations are not sustainable just because they have less environmental impact.
  4. While fear and anger can motivate people to engage in climate activism, the strongest and most sustainable organizing is driven by love for one’s community, oneself, and the world. Acting from a place of love makes climate organizing more powerful and enduring.
  5. Philanthropy concerned with the future of young people must recognize that young people are not isolated from the crises that we face, including the climate crisis. We are fully confronting the world that we live in and organizing to build our future. Right now, we also need to be thinking about the rise of authoritarianism and building power for mass non-cooperation.

Resources

CLIMATE CHANGE & MENTAL HEALTH

The Climate Mental Health Network
Climate Anxiety Is Taking Its Toll on Young People | TIME
Unnatural Disasters: The Climate Crisis and Youth Mental Health | TYP
Climate Policy for Better Youth Mental Health: Corporate Accountability | TYP

RESEARCH + DATA ON CLIMATE EMOTIONS

Climate Emotions, Thoughts, and Plans Among US Adolescents and Young Adults
US Climate Emotions Map

STORYTELLING, ART, & CULTURAL RESPONSES

We Hear You – A Climate Archive
Ashanee Kottage’s work: Elephant Half
Ocean Optimism
Vicious Sedimentation
Land as Pedagogy

ARTS, PERFORMANCE, & CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT

Embodiment
Kavaya Press
LubDub Theater
Climate Change Theater Action
Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (In Your Shoes methodology)

YOUTH + JUSTICE MOVEMENTS

New Deal For Youth: Definition of Environmental Justice
Emerging Climate Champions Award from Lever For Change

STEM EDUCATION

Recasting the Agreements to Re-humanize STEM Education

What Can Philanthropy Do?

Youth-supporting philanthropy must recognize that the future well-being of youth depends on addressing climate change and rising authoritarianism.

Sustainable and equitable giving practices include

  • Providing multi-year general operating support to organizations so leaders have stability and autonomy for long-term impact, and the nonprofit sector is strengthened to meet the challenges ahead.
  • Trusting grantee partners to know what they’re doing, rather than micromanaging or imposing strict requirements.
  • Supporting intersectional work so leaders so can engage in broad, interconnected strategic work, instead of being limited to siloed approaches.
  • Centering funding strategies on building inclusive communities and amplifying youth voice.

Memorable Quotes

The communities who have suffered the burdens of climate injustice for so many years have lived deeply and intimately with these problems, and they are the ones who have the solutions. We have to create the conditions that enable the leadership of communities who face the impacts to be at the forefront.

—Najah Casimir, Barr Foundation

We live in a society that robs people — especially young people — of power and agency. Through activism, young people reclaim that power and agency, and it is an incredibly transformative experience.

—Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise Movement

Sharing our stories and creative expressions creates solidarity and hope, helping us cope with fear and envision a just, sustainable future where the communities most affected hold the solution.

—Ashanee Kottage, Kavaya Press

What I aim to do is keep them inspired even after they are no longer youth. There’s a hopefulness and energy in being young, but adulthood often robs us of hope, joy, imagination, and wonder. To support lasting youth leadership, we need to dismantle barriers they may build within themselves as they continue their work.

I am using more empowering language in my thought and in my spoken word — I’m no longer talking about a healthy society or a healthy planet, but instead a wellful society and a wellful planet. Because a pursuit of health puts me in a constant state of healing, whereas a pursuit of wellness puts me in a state of willful being

—Myiah Smith, TYP

Contact the Speakers

If you’d like to follow up with any of these speakers, please reach out to GTY.

Speakers

MODERATOR

Myiah Smith

Policy Consultant, National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy

Myiah Smith is a sustainability futurist who merges performance arts, education, and systems thinking to envision, develop, and expand liberated futures. As a D.C. native, Myiah grew up with her father serving as the D.C. Anacostia Riverkeeper; summers spent hauling tires out of the marsh, laying river walk trails in the spring, and restoring wetlands all year long. Myiah’s commitment to environmental stewardship and social unity is deeply ingrained in both her personal and professional pursuits. She consults with organizations such as the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy and the Georgetown University Laboratory for Global Politics and Performance, in pursuit of economic, social, and environmental harmony through impactful, long-term projects.

Aru Shiney-Ajay

Executive Director, Sunrise Movement

Aru Shiney-Ajay (she/they) grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she first started organizing around human rights and marriage equality. In college, Aru joined the fossil fuel divestment campaign, eventually leading the campaign through successful student and faculty resolutions calling for divestment. Aru began running Sunrise’s training program as a sophomore in college in 2018 as a nineteen year old, and in 2019 left college to organize with Sunrise. She has served as our Trainings Director, Deputy Campaign Director, and was recently hired as Executive Director.

Najah Casimir

Program Officer, Mobility, Barr Foundation

Najah is a Black disabled woman who was raised in the Muslim faith tradition. Originally from Philadelphia, Najah’s approaches are deeply informed by the experience of being nurtured in a city of communities that prioritize joy, celebration, and liberation.

As a Program Officer on Barr’s Climate team, Najah’s work focuses on the Mobility strategy and assisting with program-wide activities related to advancing racial equity. Before joining the Barr Foundation in 2021, Najah worked at the City of Cambridge and focused on community-centered approaches to engagement and using technology to improve constituent services. Prior to that, they were a member of Boston’s Active Transportation team. Through projects and programs designed to make streets safer for people using low-carbon transportation options, Najah’s work focused on infusing equity into decision-making processes.

Ashanee Kottage

Founder of Kavaya Press

Ashanee Kottage is a theater maker, poet, and scholar from Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the founder of Kavaya Press—an artist collective and sustainable publishing home for writers of the Global Majority.

Kavaya challenges settler-colonial knowledge production through multisensory, place-based storytelling that reconnects audiences to land and ancestral knowledge. Rooted in radical hospitality, participatory democracy, and cultural decolonization, Kavaya sees writing as both creative expression and political act.

Ashanee’s artistic practice began in theater, translating science into embodied performance, and spans projects with the Earth Commons, the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, and We Hear You: A Climate Archive—which has reached COP27, the Hirshhorn Museum, and Stockholm’s Dramaten. Her debut poetry collection Sand & Sweat traces a coming-of-age across continents, while her scholarship explores the journey of coming-of-place. With a degree from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and a Master’s in progress at Tufts in Urban and Environmental Planning, Ashanee approaches art as both city-scale advocacy and national diplomacy. She is currently based between Boston and Colombo, working on her first film, Lunu Rekha, a meditation on tourism, labor, and cultural memory in Sri Lanka.

Presented by

SUGGEST A PROGRAM

Have something you want to share or learn?

GTY is interested in uplifting strategies for philanthropy to support thriving youth. If you have an idea for a future program, reach out to us.

Subscribe

Stay informed about the latest news, events, and opportunities.

Subscribe

* indicates required
Do you represent a grantmaking organization? *

Learn

Connect

Act

GTY is a funders’ forum promoting equitable systems, structures and opportunities for young people to thrive in learning, work, citizenship and life.

follow us on LinkedIn