Issue link: https://takingitglobal.uberflip.com/i/1545356
Tayyaba Shahzad, Ontario From the Ground Up Climate anxiety is affecting more and more people as climate change intensifies. Tayyaba hosted From the Group Up was a 3 part series of workshops that combined hands-on gardening practices with storytelling and future-focused conversations to encourage participants to build resilience and agency in the face of climate challenges. Using the metaphor of gardening throughout the sessions, participants began by planting seeds and reflecting on the values they wanted to seed and nurture, explored what it means to cultivate care through propagation, and finally imagined more sustainable futures through terrarium building and conversations. In the final session, participants created a manifesto centred on the rights of humans and animals, justice, care, movement, and access, and contributed to a video documenting their terrarium-building process and their journey through the series. The Fellowship provided Tayyaba and her team with guidance and space to refine their idea to maximize the community impact. She plans to continue the series with future sessions on environmental practices such as seed preservation, clothing mending, book binding and more! As someone new to gardening who faced similar challenges to the participants, I felt like I was on a journey with them. Seeing the participants leave with so much knowledge and enthusiasm filled me with love and pride for what we'd created! ENVIRONMENTAL