Climate for Change offers various tools, digital learning materials and live webinars to help you get the most out of your conversations - including our flagship program, Climate Conversations.
A Climate Conversation is a 2-hour discussion and workshop designed to help individuals understand climate change, explore solutions, and take action. It provides a safe space for people to ask questions, share concerns, and connect emotionally with the issue of climate change.
Led by a trained facilitator, these conversations can happen in-person or online and focus on how people can push for systemic change through democratic action. At the end, you’ll receive resources and tools to continue your climate action journey.
Having conversations with our friends and family about climate change is one of the most effective things we can do to combat it. You can get involved by training as a facilitator, or signing up to host a conversation.
Most Australians already know about climate change. We hear about it more and more in the news, and on social media. In fact, the amount of scary information we receive about climate change can be overwhelming, and make us feel confused and powerless to do anything about it.
We know that climate change is scary. Through conversations, we can offer people time, space, and safety to process the issue of climate change. We want to help people get past the doom and gloom, and into hopeful, positive action in a way that is accessible and non-judgemental.
“I've been truly surprised by the lasting impact of my Conversation amongst friends who were previously silent on the issue – we are still talking about it nine months on!” – Jarrod, host
What happens in a Climate Conversation?
Here’s how the conversations flow:
The Climate Conversations program was initiated by the idea that in order to achieve meaningful climate action, we need a critical mass of people supporting efforts and policies in Australia. Social research shows that we make sense of confusing information and decide what to do about it through conversations with people we know and trust.
So, our conversations focus on helping people understand why supporting climate action is so urgent and important, and giving them tools for engaging with governments and other systems of power to push for systemic change.
How do Climate Conversations happen?
We train facilitators who go into their communities and collaborate with people who host Conversations. As a part of the facilitator training process, they identify a few people in their community who they think might be willing to host an afternoon tea, coffee catch up, dinner, or other event where the Climate Conversation can be run. People who would like to host a conversation can also sign up to be matched with a facilitator.
We specifically encourage hosts to invite people who are outside of the climate ‘bubble’. By this, we mean people who know climate change is real, but who haven’t really engaged in climate action. Our Conversations provide a friendly, nonpartisan environment for attendees to share their feelings about climate change, ask questions and explore how they can become a part of the solution.
Our most recent impact report reveals 86% of Climate Conversation attendees feel more empowered to take action on climate change. Notably, 56% of attendees were previously uninvolved with any other environmental organisation. We can also expand our message and program by asking attendees to then go on and host their own conversations.
There is increasing social and neurobiological research that explains that while humans take in information from various sources, the way we process that information – make decisions about it – is through conversation, particularly with people we trust. Through conversations, we can offer people time, space, and safety to process the issue of climate change.
In the past decade, Climate for Change has:
- Trained over 450 people as Climate Conversation facilitators;
- Delivered more than 1,350 conversations; and
- Engaged more than 11,500 people.
How do Climate Conversations lead to action?
Unlike a lot of other climate resources, our conversation content is focussed more on action than on the problem. We particularly focus on citizen action - such as voting, writing to politicians, signing petitions and choosing an ethical super fund. We are nonpartisan and encourage engagement with politicians from across the spectrum.
Politicians are influenced by many different forces. In a democracy, though, they are ultimately accountable to the people who vote for them. However, most people don’t meaningfully engage with the democratic process outside of election day. With a disengaged electorate, it becomes much easier for lobbyists to have an oversized impact on politicians.
We want to make democratic engagement easier so we can shift the dial of influence, and take back the ultimate power that voters have in a representative democracy. We provide Conversation participants with encouragement that their voice can make a difference, educate them on the electoral system, and provide templates and resources to make political advocacy easy and impactful. If we want to see real change from politicians, we need to mobilise the silent majority to make their voices heard, and let their elected representatives know that if they don’t change their policies, they will be out of a job.