April 22, 2024

Brigitte Stepanov

Climate Fresk 2.0

ETL participated in a second Climate Fresk, co-organized by the Georgia Tech Office of Sustainability, the Georgia Tech French Club, and the Consulate General of France in Atlanta, on April 19, 2024. The Climate Fresk is a collaborative workshop that teaches participants the fundamental science behind climate change and empowers them to take action against its consequences. 

Opening Remarks: 

Hi all, my name is Brigitte Stepanov: I am Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies here at Georgia Tech and an Energy Equity, Environmental Justice, and Community Engagement Faculty Fellow with SCoRE, the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education. I am delighted to be here today and to have the distinct pleasure of kicking off today’s Climate Fresk.

I would like to begin by warmly thanking all of the organizers of today’s wonderfully bilingual event: the Georgia Tech Office of Sustainability, the Georgia Tech French Club, and the Consulate General of France in Atlanta. A sincere thanks to the facilitators in the room (Anna Zelcer, Yassine Ben Zineb, Steve Place, Chloe Potherat) and to the participants. I know that late April can pose particular scheduling challenges, and I thank you for taking the time to be here. This is the best place to be this morning!

My first encounter with the Fresk dates to this past fall at Georgia Tech-Europe, our campus in Metz, France. There, I directed Serve-Learn-Sustain-France, a sustainability-focused study abroad program founded on interdisciplinary thinking and community-engaged learning. I was thrilled to work with a Climate Fresk facilitator to organize both a Fresk and a Fresk training session, which brought to the fore the key principles guiding the sustainability-anchored, service-centered journey that my students and I were on that semester. The questions the Fresk raises had appeared throughout the semester through the lenses of distinct disciplines and their methodologies including environmental science, sociology, political science, philosophy, literary studies, and visual culture. Indeed, the Fresk – in equal parts edifying and enjoyable – presents the opportunity to understand the basics of climate change through collaboration and to dialogue across these disciplinary siloes and even systems of knowledge – from the fundamental science of climate change to the humanistic, oftentimes very creative thought, that the Fresk debrief discussions allow. In our case today, we will also dialogue across language and culture.

The Fresk helps us think about responsibility, our relations with the life that surrounds us, and the land on which we find ourselves. The Fresk encourages us to think the history, present, and future of our climate crisis. It helps us see what kinds of positive impacts we can have when we take into account our own positionality and anthropogenic impacts on the earth. Here’s to continued engagements with planetary concerns present and future, to sustained reflections on what we can do, and to empowered action against the consequences of climate change.

Event details:

Welcome to the Climate Fresk hosted by the Georgia Tech French Club in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Office of Sustainability! Join us at O'keefe - Main Building for a fun and informative workshop on climate change. Let's come together to learn, discuss, and take action towards a sustainable future. This event will be conducted in both French and English, so we recommend that students are at least conversational in French (B1/B2). Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and learn how to make a positive impact on our planet. Food and drinks will be included! See you there!

https://climatefresk.org/world/

“Climate Fresk” is a collaborative workshop that allows you to understand the essentials of climate issues to take action. The workshop allows novices and experts to discover or deepen their knowledge of this subject. It’s scientific, accessible, and effective. The facts are sourced from the most respected scientific publications: the IPCC reports. The workshop brings together participants and appeals to the creativity and collective intelligence of the group to reconstruct the causal links that make up the Fresk. A facilitator guides the teams in order to guide them through the workshop, ensure good communication between the members, and provide additional explanations.

The program:

🔹 Reflection (1h30): discover and link the maps to co-construct the Fresk.

🔹 Creativity (30min): decompress, appropriate the Fresk and create a team spirit.

🔹 Debrief (1h): discuss your emotions, and explore individual and collective solutions.

🍹🥪Food and drinks will be included!

And then what? Following the session, you can follow another training to become a facilitator yourself and help raise awareness on the topic!

This workshop has become the reference tool to enable individuals, schools and organizations to take ownership of the challenge of climate change. Already 1.5 MILLION participants have taken part in a Climate Fresk workshop worldwide!