Drawdown, Cheer Up! Online Workshop
Feeling some eco-anxiety over the changing climate? If so, you’re not alone. Anxiety is a rational response to the growing risks of climate change. We’ve created a gentle space where you can express your concerns with others and creatively explore immediate — and delicious — ways to become part of the solution.
In six, twice-monthly interactive and approachable online sessions, we’ll help you plant the seeds for a healthy, empowered transition to mankind’s next, potentially best, epoch.
This collaborative workshop is centered in the world of food, because it’s a part of our lives over which we all have control and where small choices can make a big collective difference. You’ll learn how to reduce food waste, cook scrumptious climate-smart recipes, create a biodiverse pantry, and eat according to the seasons.
So, cheer up! The future can be bright and a new, solutions-oriented community awaits.
Wouldn’t we all love to shed our climate crisis angst and feel like we’re doing our bit to be part of the solution? Think how nice it’d feel to openly talk about the crisis and arm yourself with practical, achievable solutions that give a sense of agency over this existential threat. Together, we can drawdown carbon from the atmosphere and put it back in the soil and oceans where it belongs. Becoming aware of solutions and confident about personal contributions can be enjoyable and highly rewarding!
Soo…what will I get out of the workshop?
The Drawdown, Cheer-Up! workshop is a safe place for you to acknowledge the range of emotions you have about climate change and learn about the multitude of food-related solutions that exist to drawdown carbon from the atmosphere to help cool our planet.
Break free from isolation and a sense of powerlessness. We invite you to join a community of people who are trying to make it through this life transition successfully; to emerge on the other side of six sessions with your own sustainable eating story. One that feels manageable for you, wherever you are on the path to a greener tomorrow.
We’re opening a space for all of us to ‘not know everything’ together. We’ll share food system climate facts and scientifically-based solutions, climate-friendly recipes, movie recommendations, books, academic articles, and news about our favorite sustainable brands and retailers. We’ll encourage you to share your resources, too.
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Susi Watson
TRANSITION EXPERT
Susi is a specialist in guiding culture-transforming brands like Cisco Systems, the Walt Disney Company and UNICEF through rapid-change transitions. Susi will support us through the four phases of transition, and lead the group on a fun journey building our own sustainability stories.
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Amy Kull
FOOD AND CLIMATE EXPERT
Amy has focused her 30 year PR career in the food world and she now works with clients at the intersection of human and planetary health. Amy is a Board Member of the Food for Climate League. She’ll share ideas about how to make climate-friendly food behavior changes to help plant the seeds for your sustainability journey.
Create Your Sustainability Story In Six Sessions
Week 1
Planting the Seeds of Growth
Week 2
Reducing Food Waste
Week 3
Creating an Exciting Biodiverse Pantry
Week 4
The Beautiful Balance of Eating With the Seasons
Week 5
What is Regenerative Agriculture?
Week 6
Let’s Get Cooking!
Interested in Future Workshops? Sign up here!
The Fall 2021 pilot session of the Drawdown, Cheer Up! Workshop is in full swing and participants are already expressing gratitude that we’ve created a unique and safe space to convene, slow down and talk about feelings related to climate change. We’re definitely on to something good.
Please sign up here if you’d like to receive information about dates and times for Winter 2022 sessions. Each 6-class session cohort will include up to 30 people and last 90 minutes on a Thursday or Friday. We’d like to include people who live in Europe, Africa and elsewhere beyond the U.S., so please help us determine the time that works best for you (complete form on right).
We look forward to meeting you in January!
An ecosystem of support.
We created the Drawdown and Cheer Up! workshop as a commercial-free environment. If you’ve found value in our offering, we welcome your financial support to allow us to continue to invest our time and expertise in the effort. A portion of your contribution will be donated to Food for Climate League.
FAQs
I’m feeling hopeless about climate change. Is this a therapy group?
The Drawdown, Cheer Up! workshop is not a therapy group, but it is designed to allow people to admit to others their understandable feelings of grief, confusion, helplessness and resentment. Articulation, witnessing and validation of such feelings is an important step in the process of moving through the major transition we’re all facing. However, if you’re experiencing deep feelings of hopelessness, rage and despair, please contact a trained therapist immediately. Think of our workshop as an honest and open roundtable of equals who are looking for a sense of control, community and purpose when it comes to being part of the climate solution.
Climate change is such a big, complex issue, it will take government policy and enormous systems change. Can individuals really make a difference?
Absolutely! We agree that massive systemic change is needed, but we believe in a grassroots approach as well. The more of us who talk about the problem and come together to make personal behavior changes, the more our friends and family members might be inspired to make similar changes…and so on, and so on. Individuals, when joined together, build movements and make history. We’ll expect workshop participants to share their newly-gained knowledge and sense of purpose with their networks. All we can do is light an inspired match.
What level of computer skills do I need to participate?
We’ll host the workshop on Zoom and you’ll have plenty of technical support. Part of the magic of the sessions will happen in breakout groups or during creative exercises that will employ Mural, a collaboration tool that will help us all contribute and see our bigger group picture together. When you sign up, we’ll send you information and links to a tutorial so you can familiarize yourself with Mural, if you’d like. Rest assured that you will never have to do anything that’s not comfortable for you and we’ll support you all the way.
Will there be homework?
Yes, but it will be fun and not take too much time! You’ll get as much out of the workshop as you put into it, and since we’re dealing with food, you can expect the homework to be creative and inspiring practice, so you can experiment with new habits and we can all discuss how they work in real life.
Are you affiliated with Project Drawdown?
While we greatly admire and are inspired by the important work being done by Project Drawdown — the world’s leading resource for climate solutions — the Drawdown, Cheer-Up! Workshop is in no way affiliated with the organization. We do, however, highly recommend that everyone visit their website, purchase their books, download their reports and engage in every way possible to support the solutions to the climate crisis recommended by the Project Drawdown experts. Our use of the word Drawdown is meant to bring attention to the concept of drawing carbon down from the atmosphere and putting it back in the soil and oceans, where it belongs, AND to cue those interested in our workshop that we will be having fun drawing and participating in creative exercises surrounding emotions and food-solutions related to climate change.
Let’s move
forward, together.