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She’s Bringing Solutions-Oriented Climate Storytelling To Children
Innovation Fellow Anya Kamenetz, an author and former education journalist for NPR, is mobilizing her network for good
Photo caption: Anya Kamenetz with her mom in 1983, standing in their front yard.
What is your venture and what inspired you to join it?
This is Planet Ed/Climate Media For Kids brings climate storytelling to children by working with industry leaders, creatives, researchers, parents and grandparents. Our goal is to empower the next generation to lead a sustainable, resilient and equitable future.
My passion for this initiative is born out of my longtime work at the intersection of children, learning and digital media, and my concern for the climate crisis. The photo above with my mom shows the natural subtropical beauty I grew up surrounded by in Louisiana, which is one of the states most susceptible to climate change and the impacts of the fossil fuel industry.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Intergenerational climate silence is born from guilt, fear, anxiety, dread and overwhelm. It stops families from facing the climate crisis and taking action. Children need skills to be part of the solution to the climate crisis as well as emotional tools to process it. Families have work to do. Schools are catching up. And media can help, too.
How does This is Planet Ed/Climate Media for Kids work?
We are pursuing many different angles in the area of narrative change: helping creators understand how to incorporate positive and helpful climate messages into their work; overcoming barriers; producing PSAs, writing, public speaking, and currently creating templates for intergenerational conversations.
Why choose a cogenerational approach?
The climate crisis affects young people and future generations the most and it is in the hands of older people to solve, so an intergenerational approach seems best.
What’s your big audacious vision? If you succeed, what change will we see?
Children’s media will foreground climate solutions with the same energy and effort we are currently seeing for cultural and racial diversity and representation. Families will talk about climate with their kids starting at young ages and these conversations will motivate intense solution-oriented action everywhere. It only takes 3.5% of the population to create massive social change.
How can people get involved with your work?
Subscribe to tinyletter.com/anyakamenetz for updates.
Coffee or tea?
It’s a latte in the cold months, cold brew in the summer.
Learn more about Anya Kamenetz here.