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Climate Wayfinding facilitator cohort at the Omega Institute in the Hudson Valley
(Photo credit: Mike Harrington, CW alum + facilitator)
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As summer begins, we’re celebrating and reflecting on our inaugural Climate Wayfinding facilitator workshops
Hooray! 63 higher-ed faculty and staff are now trained Climate Wayfinding facilitators, poised to bring the program to life on 55 campuses in the coming year, equipping climate-concerned students to navigate this liminal time with clarity, courage, and community.
During three workshops this spring in the North Georgia mountains, New York’s Hudson Valley, and along Loughborough Lake in Ontario, our team had the pleasure of leading educators from across the U.S. and Canada through Climate Wayfinding (CW), our unique, heart-forward climate leadership development program, designed for this challenging and catalytic time on our shared planet.
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Participants reflect on “Context + Community + Values” in CW Session 4.
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Over the course of each five-day workshop, participants flowed through looking inward, outward, and forward. We tapped into creativity, reflection, and dialogue as we engaged with core CW content on climate emotions and motivations, solutions and accelerators for change, skills and “superpowers,” relationship and context mapping, visioning the future, and more. We capped the workshop with a new offering focused on the unique “how” of facilitating Climate Wayfinding, along with introducing our hot-off-the-press CW Facilitator Toolbox, a rich digital hub of all program materials.
And — perhaps equally powerfully — we danced, ate, sang, stretched, shared poetry, made art, splashed in the water, talked by the fire, cried, laughed…. (So much laughter!). These workshops underscored the importance of nourishing and invigorating the people at the heart of climate healing. It’s a guiding belief for our work: By transforming the people who create systems, we can transform systems themselves.
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A glimpse of Climate Compass creation during CW Session 5 on “Vision + Compass + Plan”
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Participants shared that they left feeling clear-eyed, renewed, confident, connected, motivated, and joyful. To paraphrase one of our new facilitators: “I anticipate bringing the core program to my students and colleagues and the spirit of Wayfinding to everything I do.” Climate Wayfinding will now begin to take root on 55 diverse college and university campuses, supporting hundreds and then thousands of students to contribute to planetary transformation.
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The Elohee cohort embodies “joy” in North Georgia.
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What this experience meant, in participants’ own words
“Participating in Climate Wayfinding has lifted a veil that I didn’t know I was living under…. I realized that I have been doing this work for a while without any sense of fundamental belief in its power or joy in its doing. This experience has stoked something deep and dormant in my spirit in a way that I truly did not think was possible—the sense of kinship and community that Climate Wayfinding facilitates is nothing short of miraculous. My way of relating to the world is more open and generous now...and I have energy and drive to bring this program to multiple venues in my community.”
“I see the ripple effects as a starburst, in many directions, including my inward evolution, action in my personal life, work, community, and country, and perhaps impact beyond what I can even imagine.”
“I gained personal clarity, catharsis, insights…close friendships and access to a gorgeous set of resources for bringing [CW] home to campus. I know this will lead to cross-campus, cross-movement, cross-discipline, cross-generational opportunities and…invigorate many others’ commitments to climate action.”
“I feel transformed and empowered by this experience, and in a safe and supportive way…. We all are climate wayfinders, whether we like it or not, and [CW] provides an honest, holistic, powerful guide.”
“The strength and sense of community that we fostered in just [a few] days was palpable and inspiring and a testament to the facilitators and to the participants. We created magic.”
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The Bloom cohort embodies “vision” in Ontario.
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Our team is excited to support these wonderful new facilitators as they bring Climate Wayfinding to life through courses, co-curriculars, immersive workshops, and other possibilities over the next year.
If you, like us, are left feeling inspired, we warmly invite you to:
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💡 Learn more about Climate Wayfinding
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🖊️ Sign up to hear about future workshops, including letting us know if you’d like to bring CW to your workplace
- 💛 Donate to make this work, and more, possible
With deep gratitude to the generous thought-partners and core funders who catalyzed this program.
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