This Post was submitted by Climate Scorecard France Country Manager Stephanie Tapolsky

Established in December 2018 by Cédric Ringenbach, The Climate Collage’s main mission is “to raise awareness of the causes and consequences of climate change and its systematic nature” among as many people around the world as possible. With an enhanced understanding of the climate crisis, the organization is hopeful that individuals will be able to push for change within their communities and governments.

Figure 1: The Climate Collage

Climate Collage implements an engaging collaborative workshop to achieve this goal by helping participants understand the complexities of climate change. There are 42 cards in total. During Phase One, Reasoning, cards are linked together to highlight the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of climate change. In Phase Two, Creativity, participants trace the links to their root causes. Finally, in the Discussion phase, participants share their feelings and reflect on the various collective solutions that can be undertaken to drive action to address climate change.

Headquartered in Paris, this nonprofit organization operates around the world and has, as of March 2021, trained six thousand facilitators to run these workshops. Additionally, the company currently has 86 international representatives and an executive board of 12 members. The workshop is available in 25 languages free of charge for public events that are free to attend and run by volunteers. However, fees are charged for commercial use of the workshop. Online versions of the workshop are hosted around the world. To date, over 130,000 people have partaken in the workshop, and now have the title of ‘sensitized people’.

Figure 2: Map of International Representatives

With Climate College workshops already developed and available free of charge, there exits ample incentives to greatly increase the number of people partaking in the workshop around the world. Here are several recommendations to augment their efforts.

First, communities that are openly hostile to green policies and strategies should be targeted to participate in the workshop. For example, coal communities could be engaged with in the hope this could lessen their push back against climate protection policies.

Second, as depicted in Figure 2, representation in Russia, Asia, and southern Africa is lacking. Representatives should be placed in these areas to promote the workshop within these regions. As China and Russia are both major contributors to world emissions (emitting 28% and 5% of the worlds CO₂ emissions respectively) reaching these populations is vital.

Third, The Climate Collage can partner with local nonprofits around the world to leverage their staff and reach within their local communities to expand even further.

Fourth, while a Junior Collage exists for individuals aged 11-15, there is no workshop targeted towards those 10 and under. In order to reach as many individuals as possible and start climate consciousness young, it is recommended to create a workshop for younger children.

Lastly, efforts should be made to increase the number of schools and businesses offering the workshop on their premises through advocacy to business and school leaders.

Contact

The Office for Climate Education (https://www.oce.global/en) was launched in Pairs in 2018 to promote the education of climate change in the country. They could be a great organization for which to partner with this NGOs work.

Contact information was not available, but one can request an interview with the OCE under the press tab.

Image Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/DNkoNXQti3c