Climate Cafes SCALe Mini Grant

Timeline

2025

This project piloted its first successful iteration during the Spring semester of 2025.

Description

Affiliated program: SCALe Mini Grant

Summary

Led by undergraduate student Felicia Wang, Climate Cafes are informal weekly gatherings designed to offer a supportive space for the Duke community to engage in conversations about the emotional, social, cultural, and political dimensions of climate change and how it all connects to campus. To spark conversation, each week’s Climate Cafe had a theme and corresponding discussion prompts.

264 attendees participated across all 13 Climate Cafe events (including repeat attendees). On average, Climate Cafes hosted 20 attendees each, and the best attended Cafe attracted 36 attendees.

The success of the student-led initiative led to the pilot of a Climate Cafe themed Green Devil Internship for the 2025-2026 academic year.

Goals

Climate Cafes provide an inviting space to build community across people representing various departments, schools, organizations of Duke’s campus. The Climate Cafes served five main purposes:

To create a safe and welcoming space for members of the Duke community (students, faculty, and staff) to feel the often isolating and deep emotions that come with the climate crisis, such as eco-anxiety, eco-guilt, grief, loss, solastalgia, but also hope, joy and love.
To nurture a culture where people can lean on each other for support and talk about what they are experiencing because community alleviates climate despair.
To elevate emotional storytelling and care-based values as important aspects in the climate movement and expand the diversity of perspectives and learning in climate discussions.
To help plug attendees into spaces in which they are interested across campus. For example, many students have lots of great ideas to improve campus sustainability, but don’t know what staff members are already working on and vice versa. Climate Cafes bridge this disconnect in information sharing and encourage students, faculty, and staff to be proactive in seeking out the change they wish to make.
To inspire collaboration across schools and departments because climate change requires all hands-on deck.

Experience and Learning Outcomes

Student leaders designed and facilitated the Climate Cafe discussions and actively collaborated with partners to enrich the exchange of input and widen perspectives at the table. By bringing in a diversity of people, many of whom think about climate change in different ways, Climate Cafes created a community where all could contribute to climate solutions. Each cafe was themed and co-hosted with different campus organizations to address gaps in the climate space and invite a variety of groups around campus to participate.

Student Felicia Wang said, "Leading this project improved my personal development by providing me a space to share all my years of climate learning with others and giving me a community to discuss salient climate topics with others who care. It also impacted my academic development by helping me practice my research, grounding writing and prompt writing skills. I practiced professional skills in managing a team of volunteers, collaborating with co-host organizations, applying for funding and facilitating events."

Student Leaders

The project was led by Felicia Wang with assistance from fellow students Coral Lin, Claire Stafford, Angela Zhao, Joseph Yan, Anya Diaz-Hawkins and Lila Bragard.

Staff Supporters

The project advisor was Bryan Koen. Sophia Masciarelli provided additional guidance.

Partners AND THEMES

2025 Date	Theme	Co-hosts
1/17	Duke's Climate Culture and Its Gaps	Duke Nicholas Institute of Energy, Environment and Sustainability, Office of Climate and Sustainability, Undergrad Environmental Union, Duke Climate Coalition, Project Earth
1/21	Climate Elitism and Access to Resilience	Mckenna Wickers
1/31	Climate Research and Innovation	Math Department, Smart Home
2/3	Energy Policy under the Current Administration	Ciceronian Society, Energy and Climate Club, Duke Climate Coalition
2/14	The Climate Movement vs. The Climate Justice Movement: Conflict, Overlap, and Reparations	Black Student Alliance, Black Women's Union, Duke NAACP, Eliza Moore
2/17	Stewards of the Land: Indigenous Climate Solutions	Native American/Indigenous Student Alliance
2/28	Climate Colonialism and Global Financial Markets	Environmental Law Society, Duke Pamilya
3/5	Climate as a Threat Multiplier	American Grand Strategy, Alexander Hamilton Society, Rachel Weaver
3/17	Loving and Celebrating our Planet across Cultures & Faiths	Muslim Students Association, Multicultural Organization
3/28	Nature-based Solutions and the Built Environment	Hong Kong Students Association, Birding Club, Our Urban Future
3/31	Food, Agricultural, and Labor Justice	MEM/MBA Club, Duke Campus Farm
4/11	Long-Term Natural Disaster Recovery and Resilience	Mixed People's Association, Remote Area Med, Duke Pamilya
4/14	Climate (Im)Mobility	Mi Gente, Beyond Borders, Eilish Zembilci

Connecting to Duke's Climate and Sustainability Fluency Framework

Climate Cafes had three types of facilitation prompts: information injections, personal stories, and grounding questions. Information injection prompts provided statistics, quotes and other information for the participants to reflect on, teaching them about all "4Cs" of the Duke Climate and Sustainability Fluency Framework. Grounding questions asked attendees to reflect on the information and stories provided to them, also guiding them to think about the "4Cs."

Climate Cafe themes centered on systems thinking (providing "Context" and identifying "Causes") as well as intersectionalities (unveiling the "Consequences"). The Context, Causes, and Consequences of climate change were taught using extensively researched grounding exercises, where facilitators and co-hosts explained the theme of that week and why it was significant and relevant to different communities.

Climate Cafes particularly focused on the last "C" of the Fluency Framework–Catalysts for Change–by changing personal, communal, and societal lifestyles and behaviors; centering BIPOC and historically marginalized voices; emphasizing stories that increase awareness and inspire action; facilitating collaborations; and enhancing personal and societal resilience.

Across all three prompt types, prompts were designed to have students connect with their personal stories, and how they interact with climate issues. Through the prompts, all attendees are both students and teachers, bringing their experiences and curiosity to the table and shaping what the community learns collectively.

Participants were also asked to reflect on 3 questions at the end of each Climate Cafe: someone they met and would like to reach out to, something they learned, and a wild card question.