The host, Ayomide Olude introduced the participants to TEAP (The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project) and shone a light on the background of the project, its founding date, and its goals. The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project was founded in 2022 and it strives to understand and validate the experiences of eco-anxiety and environmental-related emotions in Africa. The team uses four means to pass their message —Research, Space Making, Webinars, and Climate Aware Psychotherapy.
For the little introduction section, Ayo asked participants to describe their emotional ambience at the moment using a weather condition. The two speakers were introduced: Shelot Masithi, a 22-year-old Climate Activist from South Africa, and founder of She4Earth, a youth-led organization that educates children about climate change, biodiversity, conservation, and indigenous practices. Nkosi Sibanda is a climate change advocate, researcher, and policy analyst. He is the program director at Green Shango Environment Trust. He is also an active member of several environment and climate change-focused organizations.
Ayo introduced the movie: Climate Mental Impact. It is a documentary about the impact of climate change on the mental health of many young people around the world. In silence, everyone watched the movie.
Ayo shared personal feedback after the short documentary ended and Hope Lekwa handled the discussions. To Shelot, he asked her for her recommendations for coping mechanisms young people can use to deal with climate change. Citing herself as an example, Shelot recommended that young people need to interact and connect with people on the same spectrum. They need to branch out to people on other levels, and they need to get innovative.
To Nkosi, Lekwa asked how to ensure young adults’ mental health needs are incorporated into climate policies, especially from a researcher’s point of view. Nkosi admitted that a lot still needs to be done as regards mental health in general in Africa. More awareness needs to be raised in the education sector. People need to know there is an intersection between climate change and mental health. To directly answer the question, Nkosi recommends that infrastructures that allow youth voices to thrive on all levels need to be developed. This will foster more youth engagement.
Back to Ayo, who shed more light on her take and conclusions from the movie. She admitted that a lot of emotions were triggered after the movie ended. She recounted fears like the permanence of the situation, and the inability to plan for the future. She was particularly worried that a flood might wash away the house she erects in the future. She recommended that the future needs to be reimagined with more focus on sustainable living tips from ancestral wisdom.
Lekwa, still listening to Ayo, asked how she has managed to cope with these feelings. She said she has accepted the situation, decided to take action, feels her emotions instead of suppressing them (in her words: she lets the sadness seat), and draws inspiration from young people.
To Shelot, Lekwa asked: How do you think young adults can become climate advocates while taking care of their own mental health? This question is to be answered from the perspective of an African, especially when this isn’t a popular topic in the continent. To this, Shelot answered that the concerned youths will have to ask themselves hard questions. Do they want to be advocates or do they want mental stability? Whatever their answers may be, her previous suggestions still suffice.
To answer the same question, Nkosi recommends that youths educate themselves, stay informed on climate change topics and news, raise awareness on social media, or join youth-led organizations.
Lekwa turned the screen to Ayo whom he asked: How do you think we can have a sense of solidarity in climate change advocacy and mental health? Ayo says the simple solution is to be in a community of like-minded people. Doing it alone can be overwhelming.
She says Tribal and Racial wars are insignificant when it comes to urgent matters the world needs to attend to. Every race and tribe will be affected by climate change.
The program ended shortly after departing messages from participants were read. Camila says she’s touched by the complexity of the subject and recommends unity in diversity, using this analogy: we’re both ends of the same stick. We are different but we are working towards the same goal. Trina from Italy was inspired to start a safe space for young people in Florida thanks to the webinars at TEAP.