IEFG BIG Series: Supporting the front line - Teachers vs the climate crisis

Welcome to the third episode of the IEFG Brains in Gear series. Inspired by the IEFG Together convening in Singapore last April under the theme "The Future of Teachers and the Teaching Profession," this episode explores education philanthropy's role in supporting teachers amid the climate crisis.

Our four discussants highlight the growing expectation for teachers to prepare children for climate challenges. Without adequate training and support, this responsibility significantly contributes to stress and anxiety. Education philanthropy has a critical role in addressing this gap.

Felicia Hanitio, Deputy Director of Education Initiatives, Djarum Foundation, leads efforts to nurture 21st-century skills from cradle to career. With a background spanning technology, philanthropy, and education, she advises the OASIS Schoolyards initiative on behalf of anchor funder Milklife.

Michelle Cruickshank, Lead of Child Development Innovation, Grand Challenges Canada, oversees Play Learn Thrive, a new fund for education in emergencies, and Saving Brains, one of the world's largest early childhood development innovation platforms. Michelle's work focuses on advancing integrated, science-backed and locally-led approaches, translating research into action and driving impact at scale.

Lennart Kuntze, Global Head of Climate Education and Leadership, Teach For All, works with 14,000 teachers and over 90,000 alumni in the Teach For All network to advance climate education globally. Previously, he worked in climate change and environmental sustainability for over 10 years at the UN Environment Programme, International Renewable Energy Agency, and Harvard University.

Djian Sadadou, Head of International Relations & Communities, Office for Climate Education, has worked internationally at the intersection of climate and education for 8 years. At the UNESCO-based OCE in Paris, he bridges the gap between climate science and pedagogy while connecting local and global action levers.

Here are some resources for your reference:

• Milklife OASIS Schoolyards Project
• Teach For All Earth Day 2025 Campaign “Building Teacher Readiness for Climate Education”
• Teachers for the Planet Programme
• Teach For All Climate Educator Story Series for Earth Day 2024 (with Rockefeller Foundation) 
• Teach For All Climate Education Resource Hub
• Learn more about Teach For All’s Climate Education and Leadership work here.

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You can follow the IEFG on LinkedIn here. https://www.linkedin.com/company/international-education-funders-group-iefg

Transcript

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Yasmein: Welcome to the big series on education philanthropy, and the climate crisis. I'm Yasmein from IEFG, your host. And in this episode we are exploring what role can education philanthropy play in supporting teachers' performance and maintaining their wellbeing amid the climate crisis. This episode is inspired by the insightful discussions that emerged during the IEFG Together convening held in Singapore last April under the theme “The Future of Teachers and Teaching Profession”. The climate crisis Affects teachers performance and overall wellbeing in a variety of ways, despite that around the world and especially the region's most affected by climate change, a lot of teachers still lack the necessary knowledge and skills needed to tackle climate change in their classrooms or assist themselves and the climate crisis affected children effectively. Today we will hear from education, philanthropy leaders and the climate education experts who are making a difference. 

Today we are joined by Lennart Kuntz from Teach For All. 

Lennart: Thank you.

 Yasmein: Felicia Hanitio from Djarum Foundation. Djian Sadadou from Office for Climate Education, and Michelle Cruickshank from Grand Challenges Canada.

Michelle: Thank you. 

Yasmein: Welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you all in today's system. In recent years, education philanthropy has become increasingly involved in teacher education with a strong focus on professional development. However, we observed that much of this investment is directed toward global trends such as AI and emerging technologies in teaching, for example. While less attention is given to the distributive impact of climate change on educators and the teaching profession. Maybe we can start with Lennart first. Lennart, can you describe the current situation of climate education globally and the ability of teachers to meaningfully prepare students for their future? 

Lennart: Thank you. I'll start with a simple truth, which is that climate change is not a distant threat anymore. It has a devastating impact on all aspects of children's lives and education today, and in many ways it's not climate change, but it's everything and everywhere change. Between 2022 and 2024, 4 million children face school closures due to the impacts of climate change. Approximately 1 billion children live in countries classified as extremely high risk of climate change. They face a lifetime of disruption. Children know this and it makes them angry, anxious, and they demand action.

There was a study by the Lancet in 2021 that illustrates this very vividly. Yet if we look at education systems, we see that they're not ready to prepare students for this left reality. On the contrary, climate change and environmental risks are barely reflected in school curricula and in classrooms.

And I think ironically, some of the student-led climate movements like Fridays for future started with skipping school. Now you ask about teachers in a global survey in 2021, 50000 teachers were asked and 95% agreed that it's important or very important to teach about climate change. I. Less than 40% felt prepared to actually do so. From working with hundreds of teachers from across the Teach Fall network, I know that teachers often show an emotional response to climate education that's characterized by this great concern and desire to do something mixed with feelings of imperfection. They feel like they don't know enough to confidently speak about climate change hypocrisy. They feel like they themselves live in unsustainable ways. Of frustration due to limited time, resources, and support for engaging in climate education. There's also a common misconception that climate education is purely theoretical or that it should be combined to science subjects. All in all, most teachers feel daunted and overwhelmed by the desire to teach about climate change. So what we have to do is to build the readiness of teachers and of education systems at large for climate education and our case we are supporting our networks teachers to engage students in climate education through a global community of roughly 900 people. Already training with easy access to knowledge, tools, and customizable resources, and much more for Earth Day For example, in April last month in 2025, we've shared some great local solutions for building teacher readiness for climate education from across the world. 

Yasmein: Thank you, Lennart . I fully agree. Building the capacity of teachers and the education systems at large is essential for effective climate education. So Felicia Education philanthropy has a critical role to play in this. In your view, are they falling behind in supporting teachers' professional development and climate education? If yes, what might be the reasons? 

Felicia: So as we saw from the global landscape that Lennart played for us, schools and teachers are some of the most vulnerable and yet most vital parts of our communities that are affected by climate change, and they urgently need the support of the philanthropic community. In our work in Indonesia, we've seen a similar pattern. Indonesia ranks among the 10 countries most at risk of climate change, but the majority of its 3 million teachers have not received proper training on climate education, and it is not yet a mandatory part of the curriculum. And so why is this? I think part of the reason is that what's easier to measure often gets prioritized. So literacy and numeracy, they feel more basic, easier to track, easier to fund. When a country like Indonesia is still working to get its country majority literate numerate, sometimes climate education can feel like maybe it's not a first order priority. I think another reason is that climate education can sometimes be seen as this very technical, even abstract, far off topic, intimidating instead of something that is actually a very concrete Day-to-day reality faced by teachers, students, and schools. So when our group started working with teachers and principals in the city of semarang in central Java, Indonesia, on an early pilot for climate resilience education, we conducted a baseline survey where we spoke to school leaders and teachers to understand what they felt like. Where are the biggest barriers to climate education, and I thought the results were quite illuminating. Out of the teachers who were elementary school teachers, 46% of them said the material is too complicated for young elementary school students. This was one of the top two reasons. 46% also felt like they like confidence to be able to teach this knowledge effectively. Reasons that were much lower on the list were things like having enough information, having. Enough teaching aids and so on and so on. So from this, we see that not only does climate education feel complicated, sometimes it can feel like a luxury through conversations with a variety of schools. We found that sometimes it's something that the low resource schools who actually need the support the most, they feel like it's not for us. Maybe it's for the schools that have fixed the basic issues and they have the extra time, energy, and money. To embark on climate resilience education. So I think the core of the issue, yes, funding resources, number of programs is important, but I think the core of the issue is really about this mindset gap. To answer the question of, you know, is philanthropy behind on supporting teachers and why? I think it's about framing, it's about mindset, which then trickles down to priorities, how solutions are designed, how they're experienced by teachers and school communities, and which schools can ultimately benefit. So I think the critical thing for us to learn as a philanthropic community is how can we see this not as an extra priority to add to our already full plate, but as a lever to tackle all the other issues that we are already facing. The ones that are already getting the most dollars. And priorities and eyeballs. What if we got creative and really intentional about that design process? And I'm sharing this not as an organization that has by any means, figured it out, but is very much early in this journey, is wrestling with these tensions. And so ultimately, I believe, we believe that reframing climate education as a foundation and enabler, not an extra, you know, it's politically challenging. It takes more upfront work. But this is absolutely critical. If we want to be able to provide the teachers and school communities who need the most support with empowerment. 

Djian:  That's fantastic. We believe that everyone can actually do climate gen education, and we truly believe that climate education should be accessible to everybody, but that has a  cost, and that's where philanthropy can come in, right? We don't need just the pedagogical resources. We need the continuous pedagogical quality, professional development of those teachers. That includes a scientific foundation, of course, to understand what are the mechanisms at play of climate change, but that also includes a reinforcing of pedagogies, right? We use a lot of active pedagogies for climate change education because they work. We know that when the learner is in a situation which they are participating in the construction of their own knowledge. Through inquiry based or project based pedagogies. We know that data works for subjects like climate change, and those are pedagogs that sometimes teachers learn during their initial training, but then for 20 years, no one ever comes and check if they're actually doing that or if they have questions or if they need some reinforcement in this. So an actual quality. Professional development support to these teachers on climate change is not only science based, but it's also pedagogy based, and it includes a variety of topics, not only the science, but also we can talk about eco anxiety with them, giving them concrete tools to tackle some of these topics with their students and therefore get their confidence back.

Yasmien: Thank you Djian, also about talking about eco anxiety. We actually have discussed in the last episode, funders climate anxiety, but we haven't really discussed climate anxiety and its effect on teachers and on students. So we hear the term climate anxiety a lot, but it's not always well understood or discussed. So Michelle, as granted challenges Canada have dedicated portfolios for climate and also for mental health and wellbeing. Do teachers experience high levels of stress or worry about climate change and its impact?

Michelle:  We often hear this term climate anxiety, which I think is really a catchall for all the different anxieties that are related to climate change and some were just mentioned, but generally I think we're really talking about this profound sense of stress and overwhelm that's hitting educators really hard, especially those who are working in emergency and climate crisis settings. We have two portfolios at Grand Challenges Canada with a strong sense on wellbeing. So one is the Being Initiative, which invests in mental health innovation led by young people for young people. And then our new Lego funded portfolio called Play Learn, thrive, which has an ECD and education and emergencies focus. Both started with scoping exercises to ask stakeholders about gaps that our funding could support and both found that there were significant anxieties related to factors brought about by climate change. And this includes economic instability, displacement. So for play, learn, and Thrive, we partnered with Aga KhanUniversity and started with this really broad question, which was, what are the biggest gaps in early childhood development and education and emergencies, and where could our funding be most catalytic?

And what surprised us, and maybe it shouldn't have, but was just how often educator stress and wellbeing came up. It was everywhere in the data, in the stories and the voices of teachers themselves. I think one quote that's really stayed with me was from an educator who said, very simply, none of us are doing okay. And to me that was really powerful. It was a reminder that if teachers aren't supported, it's impossible for them to support the children in their care. And it reminds me of that classic oxygen mask analogy where you have to put your own mask on first before you can help someone else with theirs. So when it comes to climate stress, specifically, educators are facing this perfect storm of challenges. They're dealing with things like displacement, economic insecurity as livelihoods disappear, unbearable heat in classrooms, behavioral issues that crop up as a result, flooding disease, and so many other climate related barriers that are just making, getting to school, let alone teaching in a classroom an uphill battle. And on top of that, many teachers told us that they don't feel trained or prepared to help children process what's happening around them. And I think it's also important to call out that there's this big narrative out there that teachers are responsible for preparing the next generation to tackle climate change, which is such a great idea in theory, but how can we ask them to do that without giving them the right training and support? It just doesn't feel fair, and it's leading to even more stress and anxiety for teachers, especially in crisis settings where support is already limited. So I do think educators deserve and require more support, and I think that support that philanthropists and funders can definitely play a big role in.

Djian: building up a little bit on what Michelle's mentioning at the Office for Change Education, we've been funded over seven years ago with the main mission of bringing quality climate change education to teacher through mainly professional development. So we do understand that the need from the ground of teachers to access quality materials and quality professional development. But I wanted to first start by clarifying a little bit about what we mean when we speak about climate related emotions in the Classroom because we often tend to oversimplify this topic in the public discourse and as at the OCE, we approach this through a science-based systemic lens that is rooted not only both in educational theory and psychology, but also in practice. So first of all, I wanted to clarify that there are. Direct and indirect mental health impacts. On one hand, we have those direct impacts that can be sudden violent disruptions to people's lives, such as what we see when there are extreme weather events such as floods or wildfires. And these can indeed cause severe trauma and in some cases lead to some PTSD. Although these cases are not yet widespread, and it's important to mention that they are indeed projected to increase with the rising frequency of intensity of such events to climate change. 

Yasmein: Thank you so much, Djian, Felicia, Michelle, and of course Lennart. 

Teachers are at the forefront of driving change, equipping students with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to act sustainably. However, teachers themselves are facing significant physical and mental challenges due to the devastating impacts of climate change. They are still not supported and equipped to teach climate change with confidence and impact. To reach their full potential as change makers in classrooms, they must be supported and empowered, and this requires a multilevel approach. Support must come from schools, teachers training institutions, communities, education systems, governments, and of course education philanthropy. So what are some of the initiatives that you are working on making difference in empowering teachers for climate action? Fliecia, how can education philanthropy play a transformative role in this effort? 

Felicia: As a foundation, we've worked in both environment and education for decades, including supporting teachers as part of that work, supporting school leaders and local government stakeholders. But it's only in recent years that we've become much more intentional about integrating the two to the earlier point of Alana, common language, reframing the issue. One of our most recent and still ongoing, we could say Learning Labs, has been the Oasis Schoolyards Indonesia project, which we have supported through an affiliate dairy company, milk Life in Collaboration with international organization, resilient Cities Network, and the semarang City government. So the idea behind this multi-stakeholder collaboration is creating a movement where teachers, students, parents, and the local government and communities come together to co-design and transform schools into green havens that can benefit. Definitely immediately the school environment, but also the surrounding community as a green space, as kind of a hub for a movement. This model started in Paris where it scaled to over 120 schools there, and recently we're exploring what it looks like to bring it to a very different context in Asia, in semarang, Indonesia, we're in the midst of this effort and in Kean city in the Philippines. The Mass Accept foundation is supporting the local contextualizing work there. And so I think there's a couple of layers of contextualizing to make sure that something that could be a good idea at a high level is ultimately making a difference in the local reality in the network of existing relationships and structures. So maybe one of the first points we started thinking about, we were even thinking about setting up this collaboration was contextualizing funding and partnership landscape in much of Asia, especially in Indonesia, if I may say, business, family and philanthropy are deeply interconnected. It's rare that you hear about a pure grant making organization. A lot of times it's about multiple hats that a group of philanthropists also business leaders might play. And in this sense, one of the first steps to maximize impact and collaboration was not just a question of how to provide funding, but how to leverage existing operational capital, the local networks, experiencing and navigating a system that can sometimes be confusing to navigate. And of course, the existing relationships. So it actually took us nearly a year to negotiate and structure the partnership in a way where we were not just coming in as co-founders, but also co-operators, which was a real learning process for everyone involved.

Yasmein: Thank you so much Felicia, for sharing some concrete examples of education, philanthropy work on supporting teachers on climate. So Michelle, what are some of the initiatives you are working on right now in Grand Challenges Canada that are making a difference in empowering teachers for climate action? 

Michelle: So at Grand Challenges Canada, our core mission is to find and invest in bold innovations that tackle some of the world's biggest challenges. And we believe that real lasting change happens when local innovators or those who are closest to the problem are leading the way. And one example of this that stands out is our work through the Saving Brains portfolio, where we supported One Sky and they've shown just how transformative it can be when educators receive the right training and support. And in fact, thanks to their approach, schools were able to safely open almost immediately after severe flooding, which kept children in school, kept educators and communities running. But I am especially excited about our newest initiative, which is Play Learn and Thrive. And again, a shout out to the Lego Foundation whose partnership has made this. Initiative possible. And it's designed around a simple but powerful idea, which is children's ability to learn and thrive is deeply connected to their wellbeing, to the wellbeing of their teachers, caregivers, and the wider community. So if we want children to flourish, especially in these crisis settings and emergency settings, we have to strengthen the wellbeing of the entire support network around them. So right now we're in the process of selecting our first round of locally led projects for Play, learn, and Thrive. And we'll be funding 16 innovative ideas that help both children and educators that can build resilience in the face of climate and other crises. And we know that this is of course, an urgent need. So stay tuned because we're about to start funding what I think will be some truly inspiring, locally led solutions that put both educators and children and their wellbeing at the heart of education. And because we're just starting out our support in this space, I think it would be really great to hear and learn a little bit about what others are doing.Thank you. 

Lennart: I want to build off what Michelle shared about local innovations and supporting those closest to the work. As mentioned, we've shared some really great local solutions for building teacher readiness for climate education for this year's Earth Day. One of them was approaches for holistically integrating climate education across all subjects in Americas. Another one was a community to connect and share resources among teachers in climate change and sustainability education. In the UK there was one about teacher training that was really focused on Building a mindset of teachers as learners rather than teachers as know-it-alls that are engaging together with their students. In Liberia, there was a school club, an eco club to make climate education and connected to students' everyday experiences rather than just another lesson in a textbook in Nepal. The last one was a program equipping teachers to integrate climate topics into everyday lessons and providing them with ongoing mentorship and coaching and Pakistan. These solutions exist, but they need to be supported and they need to be scaled. While, of course, advancing climate education, also through curriculum space and system level initiatives and all those are key roles for philanthropy, we've had some really exciting collaborations with philanthropic organizations. For example, the Teachers for the Planet Initiative, which is together with the Aga Khan Foundation, a portal of 100 teacher led climate education solutions, as well as the inspiring stories, the teachers behind these that are all accessible on the internet. We had a climate educator story series for Earth Day 2024, together with the Rockefeller Foundation, where we in depth told the stories and the motivations and the solutions. Of climate educators from around the world. We also are providing climate education tools for experiential learning to students in Peru. Together with cold scope, we have developed a climate education resource hub that's already housing 280 climate education resources from across the world for educators with various partners. And I would like to point out three key things that, I think are relevant here and important for philanthropists to keep in mind. The first thing is. involve teachers in the discussions and the decision making spaces around these initiatives. For example, for the COP 28 Conference in Dubai, we brought 17 teachers from across the Teach for All Network, and they engaged in discussions and the outcomes were really remarkable. We also had a group of teachers from Zimbabwe engaging in the deliberations for the National Climate Change, Berlin in Zimbabwe. This was just really informing great decision making. Second is to really amplify the stories and the solutions of local leaders to go beyond theory, speaking about climate change education in a theoretical way, but to really delve into the practice and to surface those stories that can inspire others and can build a movement for advancing climate education. Again, philanthropy has a really important role there. Amplifiers of local solutions. The third thing, similar to what Michelle shared, is to really support the local work. That can be through contextualized materials that speak to the local realities in the countries and context where those educators are teaching. It can be by providing concrete tools. As mentioned, we work with full scopes, which are little paper-based mini microscopes that can help students to really go out. And explore the natural environment around them. And that all can help to make climate education tangible and practical. And so it's all about supporting those close to the work with what they need to get the job done.

Also, one final thing I would mention is to join forces with climate philanthropy for greater impacts. Teaching can be the green job that all other green jobs depend on, so there's a mutual interest from both sides to engage with each other and I think could really enhance the impact of philanthropy. 

Michelle: I might just add to that, Lennart, or expand on that, that I think it is really important, this piece of collaboration that you mentioned. I really think collaboration and coordination are key, and you've mentioned some really good examples of that happening already. And then the other point I thought I'd add something that came up in our scoping review, which was we had teachers and educators telling us that we need to expand the idea of educator and  crisis context. Oftentimes we're seeing with school closures that community members, caregivers, siblings are also stepping in to support children's learning. And I do think as funders, we have a really great opportunity to recognize and support these informal educators and some of the interventions that you've mentioned and go a really long way in doing that.

Yasmien: Thank you Michelle, and thank you Leonard for sharing some examples of Teach for All collaboration with Philanthropy. Djian, I know you have designed teachers, cop, teacher COP is bringing teachers voices to COP negotiations. So what are the potential areas of engagement for education philanthropy in successful initiatives such as teachers COP?

Djian: Teachers are often the missing link in implementing climate policy on the ground, and yet they rarely have a seat at the table. As at the OCE. We ensure that teachers. At a national level, every time we go to a country, we do a national conference. We invite teachers. We make sure that teachers are present in those discussions. Then at a regional level, we organize regional conference on climate change education in Africa and Latin America. Soon in Asia, we also invite teachers. We want to make sure that their lived realities are part of the discussion. And then at an international level it gets even a bit more tricky because these spaces are complex and often misunderstood by teachers and by a lot of people because they're very high up. They're very complicated as well. And that's why we created almost five years ago, I designed the Teacher's COP, which is an event in in which we not only bring teachers voices to the heart of the climate negotiations, the climate cop, but we are also. Spotlighting best practices. It stems from the same concept I spoke about earlier than many other speakers Guests at this podcast have been talking about is a matter of how do you contextualize, but how do you provide confidence? How can you do both? For a teacher, it's through Personification of what is Climate change Education, right, is by providing them with peer-to-peer learning opportunities and peer-to-peer inspiration opportunities. So the teacher's COP is not only an event to bring their voices, of course, to the cup, but it's also an event to support light those best practices to help define what authentic Climate change education looks like globally, of course, because we have teachers from around the world that connect. We always have about almost 2000 teachers that connect online to a hybrid event to learn and get inspired by 10, 12 teachers in four or five different languages. We're bridging those language gaps as well to help them better craft authentic imaging communication. How does it look? At a global scale and at a local scale, and also who is a climate change educator? What does that person look like? And that is what philanthropy comes in. It's a matter of common language. Philanthropies can support systemic organizations that work across the chain because it's important to get that dissemination across the chain and make sure that we're disseminating the right things right and that we're not just financing or putting all our efforts into isolated or photogenic projects in individual schools with a lot of resources that look very pretty in a brochure, but that actually very hard for the everyday teacher to identify with when we want and when we say that we want quality climate change education for all we mean it. We truly believe that climate change is a topic accessible to every teacher. That's why it's essential for us to work hand in hand with philanthropy, hand in hand with high level institutions and instances because we need to start building that common narrative, and the teacher scope is a vehicle for us to do that. We connect those very local projects with this global space and with teachers everywhere, and we start helping them create an inspiring image of a regular teacher doing a regular but good time Climate Education project. 

Yasmein: Thank you Giann. As you, Leonard and also Michelle have all emphasized. Context is critical when addressing the intersection of climate change and education. Felicia, a drawing on your work. Could you share how education philanthropy can adopt a global approach while still effectively responding to local challenges and contexts? 

Felicia: Another layer of contextualization of course  how to contextualize to the most relevant climate issues locally. How to contextualize to the most recent curriculum and pedagogical frameworks that teachers are familiar with for semarang it's a place where in 2024, over 600 schools had to close at some point during the year because of flooding. It's a place where at some points over the previous years, it's been the hottest city in Indonesia. And so those were some of the very concrete realities. We framed many of the discussions and so that we came in talking about this as something that's happening right now. Something that you are already experiencing rather than this abstract reality, rather than this project that came in from Paris. That makes sense. We contextualize it to what the city was already doing. semarangCity was one of their first cities in Indonesia to actually create a resilient set strategy. So we frame the language around, this is not about bad things are happening in semarang, and let's go learn from the western world. Like there is part of that, but much of the language is around the local strength, the local initiative that had already been done, the existing momentum and how this would continue that momentum. And then of course, curriculum framework, although climate change education isn't Part of a mandatory curriculum, like Djian mentioned earlier, there's many ways that climate education is basically a tool that helps us learn literacy better. Talk about history. Of course, science reinforces social emotional learning and how to cope with climate anxiety. We really emphasize also outdoor learning is very facilitative of project and inquiry based learning, and so I think all of those layers of contextualization were also key. Another layer we thought about was how to contextualize to the existing government language, again, the point of common language. So in Indonesia, the concept of schools as Havens, green Havens isn't new. Right. The ministry of Environment has been running the Vieta program for decades where it's about promoting environmental education and sustainable practices in schools. Yes. There's a little bit nuance that is different from climate education, but there's so much that is overlapping. There's so much of an ecosystem that we can already leverage. We also made it a point to make space at the first phase of the project. That was all about doing a deep study of the alignment between the two and how we could really. Use the two initiatives to mutually compliment one another. How we could use Oasis Schoolyards to help stakeholders better meet their existing KPIs. One of the most rewarding moments was during a midpoint check-in after months and months of meetings and really reinforcing this point. It's not a new project, it's a tool that is around to reinforce the existing initiatives. Finally we had a local official share after hearing some of the stories of change. Hmm. Interesting. This whole time I've still thought about it as two different things, but finally I'm starting to realize this program of yours actually is, is helping us reach our goals. It's actually helping the schools make progress and gain momentum on this thing that has always been seen as really hard to achieve. And then in that same meeting, someone with influence over. The city's budget and development planning made a comment that he wanted to help the other departments prioritize and allocate their budget to be able to scale to this initiative. And so it's one of the illustrations of how it really takes time and conversations and sometimes even repetitive conversations over and over again to align in that common language. It really is not an instant process, but when the dots start connecting, it really pays off. It really paves the way to scale and sustainability and growing momentum.

Yasmein:  Thank you everyone for this insightful discussion. So as education funders consider professional development initiatives, how can they ensure that teacher empowerment in climate education is not overlooked? What key factors should they keep in mind when selecting a project to fund ensuring a lasting impact on both educators and the students? I'll post this question to Michelle first.

Michelle: Well, a core focus for us at GCC is scale and sustainability. So I think we really do need to back initiatives that can grow and adapt and keep making an impact long after the grant ends. And in this case, this means looking for professional development programs that can be replicated across different schools and communities, but that still have a contextualized aspect and that builds lasting capacity among educators. But, I think we also need to recognize what Djian said a little bit earlier is that teachers do require a significant number of hours of training to build their confidence in this space, and so we need to balance scaling with quality. Another key factor that I hear coming up more and more, and I think we're talking about more and more in this space, is anticipatory action. So supporting teachers, mental wellbeing and resilience before crises hit. And if we want educators to foster climate resilient mindset and students, we do have to ensure that we're supporting teachers. To be equipped to handle the stress and uncertainty that climate change brings, and this includes trauma-informed training, psychosocial support, and peer networks that can help teachers to feel less isolated and more prepared to support their students. We've also seen some really effective teacher initiatives, at least in the early learning space, that offer a blend of online and in-person training or access to high quality, open resources, and plenty of opportunities for peer collaboration. I do think that peer collaboration can be key and I think partnerships with teacher training institutes and climate organizations and some of the initiatives that have been mentioned here today can really amplify that impact and ensure that professional learning is both evidence-based, but also tailored to local needs and led by local communities. I do think it's really critical to recognize this broader ecosystem of educators in climate affected areas where caregivers and other community members can often step in into teaching roles. Informally, especially when schools are closed due to extreme weather.  Funding should really reach these informal educators as well and build a supportive network around everyone. And as a final point, I think we as funders should commit to supporting projects that are locally led and ideally led by teachers or heavily informed by teachers. I've been hearing a lot of that in this conversation of just how important that is. If the focus. Of the project is to improve outcomes for teachers. And I think teachers are really the ones who can tell us what the solution should be. And I think I will end on, on a similar catchphrase to that because I think it's really important and it's that the people closest to the challenge are best placed to come up with the solutions. 

Yasmein: Thank you, Michell, Lennart , what can education philanthropy do to support and empower teachers on climate?

Lennart: Well, thank you everybody for this great discussion, and I want to reground in the truth that climate change is fundamentally shaping the current and future of our children. So we need to act and we need all hands on deck. As previously shared and as illustrated in our recent Earth Day campaign, teacher readiness is as much about knowledge as it is about mindsets and about continuous support spaces. It's a complex challenge, but it's so critical, as John explained, to overcome this discrepancy between teacher's willingness to engage and teacher's readiness to engage. What we need to do is we need to help scale those solutions that work. And as mentioned before, this is not about theory, but local climate education leadership is already happening. And as Michelle also said, we need to help scale and build the sustainability of those local solutions. We certainly don't have to start from scratch, but we have to learn from existing insights and we need to help those local leaders. To scale what already works. Now, I invite you all to check out those examples that I've shared about from our Earth Day campaign, from teachers for the planet and from other spaces, and to also share existing resources, be that from the Office for Climate Education, from so many others, with people that can make use of them. There shouldn't be a political issue, but teaching kids for their future. Second thing I would mention is to support and trust the local leaders in advancing their work. This is often not taking much. I can share an example from Lebanon that was a teacher who was an engineer by background, who started prototyping little renewable energy systems with his students, like little wind turbines, little solar portable type modules, and all he needed was just a little bit of seed money in order to get the materials and with that seed money, they just accelerated. And the whole school was building little renewable energy prototypes and you could see just how many renewable energy engineers of the future when the making in that moment, supporting those local leaders with what it takes for them to implement those solutions that they are building. Third thing is to involve teachers in the processes. As Michelle also said, we do need to give teachers a voice and we need to give them a seat at the table, and we've seen the great impact that this unlocks. As Djian also mentioned for the COP 28 engaging teachers, as mentioned from the example of as Zimbabwe, where teachers went forming the National Climate Change, we need to focus on the needs of teachers to be climate education ready. We don't need to place all the burden on them. This is also what Michelle was talking about. It's important that we keep that into perspective. We are empowering teachers, but we are not suggesting to place all the burden on them. We need to support them. So we all have a role to play in this. And this of course also includes advancing climate education in schools through policies that integrate climate education into curricula. Lastly, I want to just say thank you for your interest in this critical topic. It's so important given the dire impacts of climate change all around the world, affecting students, affecting the communities, and also due to the geopolitical situation. Currently, I would be eager to engage with anyone interested. As I said, we need all hands on deck and we need to build of those local solutions and then scale and scale further. Thank you everybody. 

Yasmein: Thank you, Lennart. Djian, how can. Education, philanthropy ensures that teacher environment in climate education is not overlooked. 

Djian: So at OCE, we believe one thing that when we talk about climate change education, we must always remember the fundamental role of schools. That is to prepare students to be informed, engaged citizens of today and tomorrow. That means that we need to equip them with the competencies they'll need to navigate and contribute to a changing world. However, that also means that we shouldn't put on their shoulders their responsibility of solving the climate crisis when you're a 12-year-old, that is not what we should be doing, and that is a very important and big nuance that we need to keep in mind. Philanthropy, again, has a critical role in supporting this, not only in the narrative, but also in the actions because we need to invest in projects that develop key competencies more than solutions because it is not the role of the school and of young kids to find those solutions. That is our responsibility. So the key competence that we should invest in them try to develop in our students are curiosity, empathy, and understanding of complexity, critical thinking, and the ability to collaborate across disciplines and cultures. These are the skills that will empower. Today's students to become climate literate adults capable not only of making informed decisions, but also to design and contribute to solutions over the long term when it's their turn to do it. And that's very important. It's important that this is schools remain places of learning and empowerment and not of fear and anxiety. So narratives do matter and with philanthropies we work hand in hand to support and champion positive hope-based also storytelling and focus at the school level on what's possible rather than what's catastrophic. And that's a very important concept. We're gonna talk about climate change. Right. We don't want to overwhelm teachers or students or burden the students with a way of solving the climate crisis. We are there to give them the tools to understand it and to act meaningfully within their own spheres of influence.

So yes, having school projects is a great pedagogy. It's a great pedagogical tool to learn. Right. And here I can give you an example again of what research has shown in terms of behavioral change that is super interesting in telling. Basically, research shows that if you have a project in which a teacher says, Hey, we're going to plant 85 trees in our school project this year, but then life at school happens and they only manage to plant 47 and not the 82, they wanted to plant initially. And then you have another class that says, Hey, we're going to plant five trees. This here in our project, and they do manage to plant those five trees. Well, research shows that the positive behavior change comes from the success of the second initiative. The one that actually fulfilled their project and not the one who actually planted more trees but actually didn't fulfill their aim they set themselves to achieve. That actually is detrimental to behavioral change that doesn't contribute positively to behavioral change. So this is a very good example of. Why projects at a school level should first and foremost have a pedagogical objective. No one should be expecting teachers and schools to, on top of everything, solve the climate crisis that we need to be very realistic about. So we need to encourage all actors, philanthropies, NGOs, UN,  ministries. To back systemic efforts, right? The projects that don't just operate in one classroom, but that can work across systems, projects, and initiatives that can link local realities to international frameworks because we cannot forget that climate change. It is a global issue. Yes, with local manifestations, of course, and we need initiatives that reflect that duality. Climate change education is not just, it shouldn't be just content, but it should be a vehicle to cultivate the future ready competencies that we all need, and we should do it in a way that uplifts connects and empowers everybody, our students and our teachers, and that is very important.

Yasmien: Thank you Djian. Felicia, would you like to share a final reflection? 

Felicia: I feel like previous speakers were already very comprehensive in sharing many different angles to be thinking about and keeping in mind. So for me, I'll just reiterate that if we are serious one about lasting teacher and student and stakeholder empowerment in climate education, we need to stop treating it as this parallel track and start embedding it into the goals, professional or otherwise, that teachers are already working towards in their holistic life priorities, their wellbeing of which their careers is apart. And actually, while we're talking about teachers, why not also mention the critical role of parents, the first teachers of students. And I think for us, sometimes we get so focused on teachers and teachers and teachers, and then we're like, oh, school leaders. And then also critically the parents. It's like if we get the teachers on the same page, if we get the government on the same page and the parents are not on the same page, then that is also very much a bottleneck. And for all of these stakeholders, just really take the time. Invest in the learning. Invest in, yes. The science. Yes. The conversations, the pure learning, including through IEFG. To understand the problem well and how we can really frame it in a way where it's relatable, it connects to what is top of mind. It is a common language, and I think we really pay attention to these overall guiding principles. I hope that in the common decades we'll see philanthropy play more and more of a catalytic role in empowering Teachers, schools, parents and communities locally and globally to be able to adapt to and face climate change with resilience, with hope and with competence. 

Yasmien: Thank you everyone. We hope you found today's discussion and insightful. To briefly recap, our speakers highlighted the devastating impact of climate change on education systems worldwide. Teachers today are facing. What was described as a perfect storm of climate related challenges, including displacement, economic hardships, extreme heat in classrooms, behavioral issues, flooding disease, and other challenges that make both teaching. And learning incredibly difficult. Despite these urgent realities, education, philanthropy remains somewhat behind in supporting teachers' environment and the context of climate change. Our speakers noted this gap is partly due to prioritizing and initiatives that are easier to measure and fund. And partly also because climate change is often viewed as a highly technical topic, making it harder to integrate meaningfully into their education strategies. 

The conversation also explored the growing issue of climate anxiety affecting both students and teachers. Many teachers feel unprepared and lack the training needed. To help the children cope with the trauma and uncertainty that climate change brings. However, our speakers shared compelling examples of how they are addressing this challenge. Through collaboration with other funders and organizations, they are already working to build solutions that strengthen resilience among the children and teachers. They have also shared initiatives such as teachers cop, that's helping to elevate teachers' voices and to bring them into global climate negotiation.

Finally, our speakers offered severe concrete recommendations and actions for the philanthropic community to better support teachers in the face of the climate crisis. First, education funders can coordinate and collaborate together. They should work together across organizations and sector sharing knowledge, aligning strategies, and avoiding duplication. They also should fund mental health and psychological support, particularly in climate affected and emergency contexts. They should also support locally led solutions and invest for long-term impact, focusing on initiatives that are scalable, sustainable, and inclusive. 

That podcast is produced by the International Education Funders Group. It was curated and edited by Ysmein Abdelghany, with post production by Sara Myles. To learn more about IEFG, please visit www.iefg.org and subscribe to the podcast for further conversations on education philanthropy, and the climate crisis.