A climate café is a community-organised space for people to have open conversations about the climate crisis (including how it makes us feel). Every climate café is different: some might include unstructured discussions, while others could feature events and workshops. No two climate cafés look the same, yet they should all feel safe, open and accessible.

Now, more than ever, we need spaces to host discussions about the climate crisis, how it affects us and the actions we need to take to tackle it. Individual actions alone won’t solve the climate crisis, but by coming together as a community, we can find comfort in our shared experiences, learn from different perspectives and model the world we wish to create.

Every year, world leaders gather at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to assess progress on climate action. These meetings are important moments; yet only select groups of people are able to participate in them. In the run up to COP27 in 2022, we started our climate café initiative to provide a template for community-organised events. This wasn’t a new concept, but the first global and youth-led version. We produced a free and accessible guide that draws on our years of experience leading eco-anxiety research and facilitating climate conversations. We also launched a micro-grant scheme to support people who wanted to host a climate café but faced financial barriers. So far, hundreds of young people have participated in or hosted their own local climate cafés worldwide.

Start by checking out our free climate café resource, linked above. It will provide you with a step-by-step process on hosting and facilitating; from choosing a location, to deciding who to invite.

Beyond hosting your own climate café, there are lots of ways to get involved. You can help us share the climate cafés with folks in your community using our toolkit, find out if someone is hosting a café near you, or donate to our fundraiser - where we’re raising funds to support activists who face financial barriers via micro grants.