Empowering Youth Through Climate Resilience

Health care access

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Climate Mental Health Network (CMHN) addresses one of the most urgent consequences of the climate crisis: its mental health impacts, particularly for youth. A 2024 Lancet study of 16,000 US Gen Z in all 50 states found that 85% are worried and 63% said humanity is doomed because of climate change. Traditional mental health systems are often inaccessible, stigmatizing, or ill-equipped to address these emerging needs. CMHN fills this gap through community-rooted, culturally relevant resources, grounded in both lived experience and scientific research.

Our flagship Climate Emotions Toolkit has been piloted successfully in LAUSD classrooms, where teachers report improved confidence in addressing climate-related stress and students feel better. With the district’s support, CMHN is expanding its reach to thousands of students for the 2025-2026 school year, helping to create safe, emotionally supportive learning environments that foster climate emotional resilience.

This grant will support the expansion of CMHN’s educator-centered initiative. The heart of our work is the Climate Emotions Toolkit, an evidence-based, age-appropriate set of resources designed to help middle school educators navigate and support students’ emotional responses to climate change. With tools such as mindfulness practices, creative expression exercises, and trauma-informed activities, the toolkit equips teachers to transform fear and anxiety into resilience and agency.

This initiative leverages our growing partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD’s) 600,000+ students. With LAUSD’s Environmental Literacy Initiative commitment to host professional development trainings and integrate the toolkit into its resource platform, CMHN will reach about 500 educators directly. We will also collaborate with LAUSD’s Social Emotional Learning advisors to tailor the approach for historically marginalized communities. Beyond LAUSD, we will reach other schools in LA County, prioritizing Title 1 schools and those in climate-vulnerable areas.

CMHN will extend this impact beyond schools by partnering with the LA Youth Climate Commission, training young commissioners to deliver mental health-informed climate programming in their communities. By targeting formal and informal education spaces, this initiative creates an ecosystem enabling youth to constructively process climate emotions, fostering emotional wellness and community-based climate leadership.

If successful, our work will help transform Los Angeles County into a national model for climate-informed mental health support in education. Students will feel more emotionally supported and empowered to engage with the climate crisis, rather than overwhelmed by it. Educators across LAUSD will be equipped with tools to recognize and respond to climate emotions, leading to healthier, more resilient classrooms. Community members, including youth leaders from the LA Youth Climate Commission, will be trained to foster mental well-being in peer-based climate spaces. Over time, we envision expanding our toolkit and training programs to elementary and high schools across LA County, particularly in climate-vulnerable areas like Inglewood, Compton, and West Covina. By embedding emotional resilience into school culture and community response, Los Angeles will not only buffer its youth against climate-related trauma but also cultivate the next generation of emotionally grounded climate leaders.