Breaking Ground, Digging Deep: Building Empathy within the Face of Climate Anxiety with Break The Divide

The Youth Harbour believes in the power and innovation of young people fighting against the climate crisis. Today’s youth activists are informed, resilient, and highly motivated – but we must also recognize the growing phenomenon of climate anxiety affecting current and would-be changemakers. 

Climate anxiety, or eco-anxiety, is the chronic distress or fear of “environmental doom” due to the climate crisis. When three-quarters of young Canadians say that climate change negatively affects their mental health, it’s clear that the climate crisis is harming more than just the planet. While emotional responses can sometimes encourage action, fear can often lead to paralysis, apathy, and more severe impacts on mental and emotional well-being.

Break The Divide is a youth organization that understands first-hand the challenging emotions that accompany the climate crisis. Yes, burnout is a widespread issue in the climate movement – but BTD knows that the emotional impacts of climate change can also prevent youth from engaging with it. Whether it stems from a place of pessimism that things could change or overwhelmedness about what needs to be done, fearful reactions to climate change most often manifest in feelings of apathy. As fellow youth, BTD understands this apathy – but they also understand how to work through it.

Break The Divide focuses on helping youth through these paralysing emotions through a novel framework: from apathy to empathy to action. The underlying premise is that when youth are given the opportunity to connect with others about the climate crisis, the empathy they build enables them to work through their emotions in a safe space, and ultimately, they can build the tools they need to take action. The work was inspired by founder and executive director Abhay Singh Sachal’s trip from his hometown of Surrey, B.C., to the Canadian Arctic. Connecting with fellow youth there about their shared and varied experiences of climate change showed Abhay how the power of empathy can be used to build personal and community resilience. Abhay founded Break The Divide not to argue that empathy alone can solve the climate crisis, but to show how empathy can build systems of support that allow for united and sustained action. 

BTD has focused on connecting communities around the world and encouraging these types of conversations. With over 25 chapters in 10 different countries, youth have been able to process their own emotions about climate change, learn about how it affects others, and build a global emotional support network. This year, BTD has expanded its mission with a more structured approach to their empathy-based framework. 2024 marks the inaugural Climate Emotions program, which is taking place in 14 high schools across what is currently referred to as Canada, and the Climate Skills & Community Building Fellowship, aimed at newcomer youth in Toronto.

With funding from The Youth Harbour’s Action Grant, Break The Divide created the Climate Emotions program to help high school students process the emotions that often go unaddressed in scientific climate change lessons. Learning why the climate is changing and how it will impact students in the near future is necessary, but undoubtedly scary, and students deserve the space to talk about these fears.

The Climate Emotions program includes lesson plans, discussion guides, videos, and educational materials that Break The Divide created from scratch. Teachers are given all of the resources they need to support students through the program, but they aren’t alone – BTD has trained facilitators to help run the program, answer questions, and guide discussions.

The facilitators are all youth volunteers, making the program a true peer-to-peer experience. As fellow youth, the facilitators are able to expand on the empathy-based materials and create a safe and authentic space by interacting with students. Since facilitators are still on their emotional journey with climate change, they understand what it’s like to experience that fear and pessimism – but they’re also living proof that students can work through those feelings. This is one of the true strengths of the Climate Emotions program: the empathy-based education is accompanied by a peer who can model that same empathy with genuine connections. Volunteers say that between working with BTD and interacting with students, this is the most engaging volunteer experience they’ve ever had. 

This is all in addition to the class-matching aspect of the program, where participating classes are paired with another from a different part of so-called Canada. An echo of Abhay’s own experience with students in the Canadian Arctic, students are able to connect with others in an entirely different context. Listening to their differences and bonding over their similarities, the students experience empathy in action in addition to their education-based pillar. These connections are also nurtured through the chance to interact more casually with other students through Discord servers run by Break The Divide volunteers.

Break The Divide is breaking ground with its empathy-based framework, but spearheading a new approach to climate change education hasn’t been easy. The Climate Emotions program has seen resistance from administrators, concerns about how parents might respond, and challenges fitting into the high school curricula. However, BTD is learning a lot from the first run of the Climate Emotions program, and it also recognizes that while its unique approach may bring obstacles, it’s also their greatest strength.

The Climate Emotions program also exemplifies the importance and impact of youth supporting youth, from the initial funding to the eventual student-to-student connections. Funded by The Youth Harbour, developed by Break The Divide, and delivered to high school students, the Climate Emotions program is a fully lateral project created by youth, for youth.

In the future, Break The Divide will look back at this moment and this first run of the Climate Emotions program as when the organization really started to solidify its place as groundbreakers in the climate crisis space. After years of experience and preparation, BTD is finally getting to put their theory into structured practice and see how their unique “apathy to empathy to action” framework unfolds – and improve upon it as they expand even further. This is what happens when youth are given the chance and security to experiment with something entirely new – and there are no limits to how far this empathy, and these programs, can go.