We at Connect4Climate thrive on the camaraderie of our team, so living under coronavirus quarantine measures has been a major challenge for us all. Still, we’ve found creative ways to stay connected, both with one another and with the climate action community worldwide, and discovered unique strategies to keep our morale and motivation up during these uncertain times. We hope you find some comfort and kinship in our stories; feel free to share your own experience with us on Twitter or Instagram!

 

What follows are small glimpses into the lives of some of the members of our global C4C squad, including our social media specialists, Jenni Philp (Edinburgh, Scotland), Dany Oliveira (Bangkok, Thailand) and Ryan Smith (Washington, DC); our partners team, Sarah Daggett (Silver Spring, Maryland), Bárbara Simões (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Inês Araújo (Moledo do Minho, Portugal); our communications consultants, Max Bartoli (Veracruz, Mexico), Max Falcone (Rome, Italy) and Roberto Razeto (Milan, Italy); our multimedia content lead, Kaia Rose (Washington, DC); our photographer, Leigh Vogel (Marble, Colorado); our graphic designer, Dani Martinez (Malaga, Spain); our senior advisor, Francis Dobbs (Alexandria, Virginia); and (last but certainly not least) our program manager, Giulia Braga (Milan, Italy).

 

How We’re Staying Safe

 

For starters, all of us are #stayinghome as much as possible and following the WHO (and, where applicable, CDC) guidelines on social distancing and hand washing. Francis summarizes his routine as “washing, wiping and waiting,” while Giulia has turned to housework (“perhaps too often!”) to keep her mind busy. Dany is tracking all the latest news and is adhering to Bangkok’s curfew.

 

Kaia washes her hands thoroughly to twenty seconds of “I Want to Wash My Hands” (modified from the Beatles classic) whenever she’s at the sink, while Ryan and his roommates regularly disinfect communal surfaces like the dining room table.

 

Sarah has dedicated her time not just to keeping herself safe, but her extended family as well, making dozens of cloth face masks for loved ones working in healthcare. She’s created nearly 100 so far, upcycling materials like bedsheets and old baby blankets. Max Bartoli is following her example, striving to create ten masks a day from cotton t-shirts.

 

Jenni has been taking care to sanitize her phone (where germs are apt to collect) and is delivering groceries to her grandparents while maintaining a safe distance from others. Inês says it’s been tough for her own workaholic relatives to confine themselves to their rooms but that she’s been making sure they comply.

 

Bárbara finds it helpful to remind herself of the end goal of self-isolation. “If we all manage to stick with it,” she says, “we have all done our part.”

 

One of Sarah's many homemade masks.

 

How We’re Staying Sustainable

 

Leigh, a vegan, is experimenting with new recipes and sharing her culinary advice for others online. Max Falcone is ramping up his own vegetarian cooking efforts and is working to build an online network committed to the idea of a “Sustainable Renaissance” in the wake of the COVID crisis.

 

Max Bartoli is calibrating his thermostat to reduce energy consumption and is looking to invest in window-mounted solar panels. Sarah is getting her son in on sustainability with homemade play dough, cloth diapers, and toys crafted from household items. Roberto is using this opportunity to homeschool his children on the importance of sustainability.

 

Jenni and her dad are building an “at-home-gym” with textbooks and bags of flour for weights, while Dany is seeing if he can replace plastic trash bags with old newspapers. Kaia is making her own cleaning solutions and carefully composting her organic waste.

 

Inês, for her part, has long been an expert at working from home and by now has her sustainability routine—bamboo toothbrush, refillable glass bottle, recycling, even homegrown veggies and chickens—down to a fine science. Francis is planting herbs and veggies too.

A glimpse at Inês's vegetable garden.

How We’re Staying Upbeat

 

Ryan has been constructing crossword puzzles and playing video games alongside college friends online. He was delighted to learn that Giulia and her brother are getting into gaming as well.

 

Max Falcone has been finishing books in his reading backlog and doing some writing of his own, while Kaia and her brother (who’s in NYC) have been slowly but surely covering gaps in their knowledge of world cinema by watching films simultaneously and calling each other afterwards to discuss. (Kaia’s also documenting the #stayhome exploits of an intrepid Lego adventurer.) Francis and his family are sampling classic comedies. Sarah is finding mental wellness through meditation and sewing.

 

Leigh, in addition to studying French and German, is using her talents with photography to document the changes to our world—small and great—brought on by the quarantine. Dany’s keeping positive with a motivational David Goggin audiobook.

 

Jenni is transporting herself with the magic of piano, which she’s relearning after a while away from the keys. For Max Bartoli, uplift comes from a healthy mix of kung fu, yoga, Netflix and HBO.

 

And Bárbara has provided a home for the world’s cutest cat, Milan!

Bárbara's new feline friend is the perfect quarantine companion.

 

 

How We’re Staying Connected

 

Our team was built on the principle of connection (it’s right there in the name!), so we’re all doing our very best to stay in touch with one another and with our friends, followers, and fellow climate advocates amid these challenging times.

 

We’ve all been doing a lot of videoconferencing, texting, and posting lately, of course, and we all keep track of the news (while taking care not to let it overwhelm us). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

 

Roberto has taken to organizing virtual dinners with friends and family. Jenni’s been participating in massive “pub trivia” sessions on Zoom with upwards of 60 teams, and Ryan speed-solved crosswords in a tourney with over 1600 competitors.

 

Max Falcone has been hosting multidisciplinary discussion groups online, assessing the situation intellectually while engaging with friends and colleagues in the process.

 

Our whole team came together over WhatsApp to celebrate the birth of Dani’s daughter, Gabriela. Congratulations, Dani!

 

And on the job, of course, we’ve been doing our best to ramp up our social media presence for you, our climate-conscious readers and supporters! Stay tuned for fun upcoming features like #SustainabilityHacks and climate-themed emoji puzzles, and don’t be shy to share your own experiences with us via tags or direct messages. We’d love to hear your stories.

 

A small selection of our worldwide #AtHome workstations.

A year ago today we lost our dear friend and colleague Max Thabiso Edkins when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 went down shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa.

Max was the quintessential climate change warrior. He was passionately committed to the cause, he knew the science, and he was a very talented and skilled communicator. He reached out to and inspired a huge range of stakeholders with his green bow tie and his special articulate messaging and his innovative events.  And he mentored and developed a large number of young people in the field. No one who met Max ever easily forgot him – such was the impression he made.

He was also a wonderful and loyal friend and a loving father and husband.

He is missed every day, but even though physically no longer with us, he continues to inspire us.

And we will continue the fight in honor of his memory.

 

Remembering Max from Connect4Climate on Vimeo.

Every March, the D.C. Environmental Film Festival brings tens of thousands of filmgoers together in the U.S. capital for a celebration of both cinema and the planet we all call home. Mirroring the mission of C4C’s Film4Climate initiative, the DCEFF not only shares moving stories on the environment but promotes concrete action to help the planet, “inspiring understanding and stewardship… through the power of film.”

 

This year, the festival is presenting two Connect4Climate-supported productions: Slater Jewell-Kemker’s new cut of her climate action documentary Youth Unstoppable and Jared P. Scott’s trans-African environmental odyssey The Great Green Wall. Youth Unstoppable will be screened on March 15 at 7:00 PM EDT at the Carnegie Institution for Science and on March 19 at the same time at American University; The Great Green Wall will be presented at the Carnegie Institution on March 14 at 7:00 PM. The first Youth Unstoppable screening and the Great Green Wall screening will be followed by moderated discussions with the films’ respective directors.

 

Youth Unstoppable is a vivid on-the-ground account of the burgeoning worldwide Youth4Climate movement. Fastidiously compiled across an eleven-year span by Slater Jewell-Kemker, a youth climate activist in her own right who embarked on this ambitious project when she was just fifteen years old, the film speaks to the power of young people to seize control of their own futures and band together to push for sustainable policy as well as everyday lifestyle changes.

 

Get your Youth Unstoppable tickets BELOW or at https://bit.ly/3a8FF3U 

 

 

The Great Green Wall, executive produced by Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles, follows the journey of Malian music icon Inna Modja as she travels east to west across the Sahel region of Africa. Modja connects with those she meets along the way through song, and learns of the importance—both practical and symbolic—of the titular Great Great Wall campaign, an ambitious tree-planting movement aiming to create a wall of solid green across the heart of the continent. The film is produced by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) with the support of Connect4Climate and partners.

 

  Get your FREE Great Green Wall tickets BELOW or at https://bit.ly/3a8FF3U 

 

 

These two films embody Film4Climate’s commitment to communicating the urgent need for united climate action through the arts. Youth Unstoppable and The Great Green Wall offer poignant, humane perspectives on those directly impacted by climate change and challenge viewers to act themselves in the planet’s defense.

 

We hope you will join us for these screenings in Washington, D.C. next month.

 

 

Youth Unstoppable tickets

 

Great Green Wall FREE tickets

 

 

Banner/thumbnail image courtesy of Pixabay photographer Skeeze. 

Twice a year every year, the trade fair known as MICAM Milano showcases the latest in high-fashion footwear, featuring more than 1,700 collections across a sprawling 60,000-square meter exhibition space. For this year’s winter edition, MICAM Milano was kind enough to invite Connect4Climate’s #YouthTakeover initiative and the X-Ray Fashion VR installation to the show to spread the vital message of sustainability in the fashion sector.

Created by MANND and directed by leading fashion photographer Francesco Carrozzini, X-Ray Fashion offers participants an immersive VR narrative on the inner workings of the “fast fashion” industry, laying bare its wastefulness and history of environmental damage as well as its alarming health impacts on textile workers worldwide. Co-produced by Connect4Climate and Vulcan Productions with support from Alcantara, X-Ray Fashion is an eye-opening call to action urging fashion houses to prioritize sustainability in design and consumers to be smart about their spending and support the planet with their purchasing power.

On February 16 and 17, MICAM Milano attendees were invited to experience X-Ray Fashion while a group of students from Milan’s prestigious IULM communications school conducted a #YouthTakeover across Connect4Climate’s social media channels, reporting out on the guests’ reactions to XRF and sustainable fashion as a whole as well as their own. This is the latest such takeover in an ongoing series spanning events including COP25, Innovate4Climate, and Asia-Pacifc Climate Week.

We at C4C congratulate the #YouthTakeover team from IULM on a job well done! We look forward to continuing to give youth leaders around the world a chance to flex their communication skills in the #ClimateAction-packed months to come.

Banner image courtesy of Dimitris Vetsikas, Pixabay. All other photos by the Connect4Climate Team.

Kids aren’t often given enough credit. Although people are quick to point out the youngest generation’s faults, many of them deeply care about big issues such as equality and water conservation.

And if they don’t currently seem to care, their viewpoints can be shaped by what we do as the adult influences in their lives. Here are 25 ways to encourage them to save water.

                                                                     

25 Ways to Help Children Save Water

1. Don’t underestimate them: They can handle hearing about scary topics such as water scarcity.
2. Make it a game: See who can take the fastest shower.
3. Show them other kids making a difference: Greta Thunberg might be a big inspiration to them.
4. Have them reuse towels: Reusing towels in your household might seem like a small act. But cutting down on one load of laundry a week can save 30 to 40 gallons of water.
5. Lead by example: Show them you care and they’ll likely follow suit.
6. Turn off the faucet when brushing teeth: That can save gallons of water over the course of a week, and it’s one of the most painless ways to conserve.
7. Ask them to notify you if they notice a way to improve: Open the lines of communication -- they might have some great ideas.
8. Teach them baths use more water than showers: You both can save the baths for special occasions. Opt for showers most of the time instead.
9. Report leaks and drips as soon as possible: That will allow you to repair them in a timely fashion. Your child may want to watch you repair the leak too, so they can learn a new skill.
10. Have them be responsible for keeping a pitcher of water in the refrigerator at all times: That pitcher of water will always be cold, cutting down on the time you run the sink waiting for a cold glass of water.
11. Teach them to scrape rather than rinse dishes: There is no need to rinse the dishes before placing them in the dishwasher.
12. Teach them to recycle: Recycling saves a lot of water usage. Make it a high priority for your children.
13. Buy them a reusable water bottle: Remind them that every time they carry this with them instead of using a disposable water bottle, they are saving water. Plastic production takes a lot of water.
14. Ask them to be a good example for their younger sibling: Kids want to be someone to look up to. And if they know little eyes are watching them, they’ll double up on their efforts.
15. Have them save energy too: Kids don’t always make the link between saving energy and water. Teach them to shut off the lights and television when they aren’t in use.
16. Show them some YouTube videos about conservation: Kids are drawn to the screen and sometimes those lessons sink in better than the ones we try to teach them.
17. Tell them they don’t always have to flush: It doesn’t hurt anything to not flush your toilet after a child pees in it. Teach them if it’s brown flush it down, if it’s yellow, let it mellow.
18. Have them draw a picture about water conservation: It might be of sad animals looking for water, or of a dry planet. Once they draw the picture, hang it somewhere you’ll all see it. It will become a source of motivation.
19. Take them to a lake: A place of beauty will often make children understand why they need to conserve water. Never underestimate the power of a pretty place. Remind them that saving water will protect that spot for future families to enjoy.                                                                                                                                                                                
20. Read a book: A book about the importance of water will help drive home why this issue is vital. A great pick is The Water Princess.
21. Let your child skip some showers: Unless your child is hardcore into playing outdoors or playing sports and they are always sweating, they don’t need a daily bath. Every other day is just fine.
22. Have a water cup designated for all-day use: Kids are notorious for taking one sip of water and then getting a new cup out next time they are thirsty. Have them use one cup all day for their water breaks.
23. Train them to use old water for indoor plants: They can use water leftover from cups around the house to water plants instead of dumping them down the drain.
24. Grow a vegetable garden: That cuts down on water usage for packaging and transporting vegetables to grocery stores. It’s a fun way to conserve water and teach children.
25. Try to lower the water meter usage: This is a tangible way to show your efforts are paying off. Let your children see how much water you’ve saved month to month. Use those monetary savings to do a fun family activity together as a reward.

Don’t Forget: A Little Adds Up

Remember to teach your child that no amount of water saved is insignificant. It can all add up to big savings over time. Together, your family can make a huge difference.

About the Author

                                                                 

Sylvia Jones is a freelance writer and mother of two from Indiana, USA. Sylvia is passionate about water conservation, the environment, and lowering her carbon footprint.

Preview thumbnail courtesy of tookapic (Pixabay). Banner image courtesy of Katja Just (Pixabay). Body images courtesy of, respectively, Alina Kuptsova and jplenio (Pixabay).

The Creative Industries Pact for Sustainable Action was launched by the Green Spark Group in December 2019 at COP25 as a means of uniting organizations working in film, TV and beyond in a pledge to take action on a set of common climate goals. Already, more than 70 signatories—including public organizations, corporations, film schools, film commissions and more—have come on board, committing to reduce their environmental footprint in line with the targets of the Paris Agreement and with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

 

“Connect4Climate is a signatory to the Pact,” says Giulia Braga, Connect4Climate program manager. “We are proud to see how the foundational work by many has evolved, and how organizations are seeing the value in committing to common goals. We all agree that action is needed to reduce our impacts, and there’s strength in saying this and taking action collectively.”

 

Responding directly to the dire findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Pact asks that its endorsees work collaboratively within and across their various industries to keep global warming well below 2°C. This means establishing useful sustainability metrics, educating and empowering employees, cutting back on fuel consumption and other unclean energy use, embracing low-carbon materials and foods, and advocating outwardly for sustainable policymaking. The organizations that have signed on must report out on their progress every other year beginning with 2020.

 

 

On February 7, our Film4Climate team had the honor of hosting a panel discussion in Brussels at the first-ever European Co-Production Forum. Titled “A Green Light for Green Production” and moderated by Connect4Climate Program Manager Giulia Braga, this discussion assessed recent strides in sustainable production across the film and television industries, suggested next steps on how to boost international collaboration around sustainability, and addressed the need to see sustainable lifestyles better represented onscreen in narratives as well as behind the scenes.

 

The goals of the Pact dovetail perfectly with Film4Climate’s own mission to usher sustainable living into both the making of films and the stories they tell. We at Connect4Climate are excited to carry forward the momentum from Brussels and spread the dual messages of the Pact and Film4Climate worldwide to steer the entertainment industry toward a sustainable future.

 

All photography by Kaia Rose of the Connect4Climate Team.

Connect4Climate has long embraced the value of the creative arts as a means of spreading the messages of climate action and sustainability. Film4Climate, C4C’s initiative aimed at “greening the silver screen,” has found success supporting both climate-positive messaging in onscreen narratives and climate-positive practice in production cycles behind the scenes. On February 7, Film4Climate is proud to be hosting a panel at the first-ever European Co-Production Forum assessing the state of sustainable film production in Europe and laying out goals for the near future.

 

Film4Climate’s mission is embodied in the initiative’s International Charter, a document painstakingly compiled between 2013 and 2018 with inputs from film festivals, film commissions, producers, advocacy groups (such as EcoProd, PGA Green, Green Film Shooting, and Cine-Regio) and various cross-sections of the film industry. In 2019, Film4Climate’s mandate was bolstered when Connect4Climate partner Green Spark, led by Zena Harris out of Vancouver, launched the Creative Industries Pact for Sustainable Action, exhorting those in the creative industries to commit to furthering the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and to keeping net global temperature change below 2°C vis-à-vis pre-Industrial levels. The Pact’s many signatories include major universities and the World Economic Forum.

For the past several years, Film4Climate has been hard at work putting the principles behind the Charter and Pact into action, championing climate-positive films such as Slater Jewell-Kemker’s Youth Unstoppable and Jared P. Scott’s The Great Green Wall (starring beloved Malian singer Inna Modja) and hosting sustainability-minded contests like the Action4Climate film competition of 2014, the Global Video Competition of 2016, the #Uniting4Climate VR Pitch Competition in 2017, and Film4Climate’s annual Post-Production Award competition in partnership with Laser Film.

 

The Film4Climate team’s deep experience working with members of the industry on green production earned C4C an invitation to this year’s European Co-Production Forum, a first-of-its-kind event that will convene key players from all across the European film and TV sectors in Brussels for an open discussion of what values the production industry should embrace moving forward and how its members can work together to realize those ideals.

 

Film4Climate’s panel, titled A Green Light for Green Production and moderated by C4C Program Manager Giulia Braga, will play a vital role in framing the overarching conversation and driving further adoption of sustainable practices throughout the industry. Made up of Cine-Regio’s Charlotte Appelgren, the European Film Academy’s Mike Downey, Make Waves Productions’ Sarah Macdonald, and Creative Europe Media’s Lucía Recalde, the panel will discuss the recent progress of sustainable filmmaking in Europe and brainstorm strategies to scale up international collaboration and increase support for climate-related content in film moving forward.

 

Thumbnail, banner, and body images courtesy of Pixabay users Joaquin Aranoa, Dimitri Svetsikas and Erika Wittlieb, respectively.

Connect4Climate was honored to oversee a #YouthTakeover at COP25 featuring the four rising climate communicators who won this year's Global Youth Video Competition! All four of these winners—Callie Broaddus, Raquel Gaião Silva, Rafael Forsetto and Kiane Assis—share memories from the conference, and what the experience meant to them, in their own words in the reflections below:

CALLIE BROADDUS

It took ten minutes to walk from one end of Madrid’s IFEMA conference center to the other—that is, if we didn’t stop to snag the handout of tree-planting chocolate, sing a carol with “Sustaina-Claus,” read the signs at the daily youth protests, or listen to the 20 indigenous people demonstrating in the entrance hall. It was a massive event, and for first-time COP-goers, a tad overwhelming.

 

This year’s Global Youth Video Competition had four winners, so Connect4Climate’s #YouthTakeover was a group effort. We connected each morning over WhatsApp to determine who would cover and attend which events (the size of the conference center often made it inconvenient to meet in person). The joint effort meant that we could each cover events specifically related to our own fields of work. For me, this meant attending events on nature-based solutions and biodiversity; for Rafael and Kiane, events on social justice and migration; and for Raquel, all things ocean.

 

The panels I attended repeatedly stressed several key points: We need to protect our tropical and temperate forests; prevent exploitation of our peatlands, wetlands, and marine kelp forests; and plant trees in bulk if we’re to make sizable strides toward climate commitments. Given that we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis—one often called the sixth mass extinction—I expected discussions on the balance between climate and ecosystems to be more prominent on panels, and less audience-generated.

 

One common thread that wove each panel together was a vocabulary of UN-centric terms and acronyms: CBD, UNFCCC, UNCCD, NDCs, SDGs and more.The ability to decipher this mass of letters proved essential to comprehending every panel—and even most coffee-line conversations.

 

Having the opportunity to attend and document COP from a “youth climate reporter” point of view was incredibly valuable for my personal understanding of conservation on an international scale. Having an energized and diverse team enabled each of us to both cover the event comprehensively and leave with strong personal takeaways. For my part, I’ll be making an acronym dictionary and lining up my biodiversity-related audience questions before attempting to navigate COP26.

 

RAQUEL GAIÃO SILVA

 

I am back home and I still can’t believe what happened during my time at COP25. Two weeks listening to alarming information and talking about nature-based solutions. Two weeks witnessing testimonials of populations already being impacted by climate change. Two weeks listening to scientific reports that demand action starting yesterday. Two weeks nourishing the desire for greater ambition. Two weeks that felt like months.

 

Over those two weeks, I experienced myriad situations I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams, from meeting Sylvia Earle in the corridor and telling her my thoughts on ocean-based climate solutions to interviewing and discussing climate finance with the Managing Director of the World Bank to speaking with the Administrator of the UNDP, who so avidly listened to our stories with full attention.

 

It was an intense and inspiring ride. And the most amazing part is that even if I didn’t meet such interesting people, the simple fact of having UNFCCC and the Connect4Climate team there to answer the million questions I had with kind smiles was all I could ask for.

 

These two weeks will stay on my mind for a long time to come, and will definitely influence my next projects, my next actions, and my next steps.