Waiting List – Climate Emotions Training

This event is fully booked. If you are interested in the event you can register on the waiting list below. 

Have you encountered young people experiencing difficult climate emotions or expressing climate or eco-anxiety, but you’re unsure how to support them?

This one-day training provides a toolbox of specific methods to help support young people with their climate emotions.

The training, focusing on climate emotions and anxiety, will provide foundational knowledge on climate emotions and will provide you with skills for helping young people aged 16-25 to deal with climate emotions.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the training, you will:

• Understand the key aspects of climate emotions, with a focus on climate anxiety.
• Be able to conduct simple activities with young people to help relieve climate anxiety and other climate or eco-emotions
• Recognise when a young person requires additional support and know how to refer them for further help.

Time and Duration

8hrs (6 hours of content with coffee and lunch break in between sessions) on one day.

The event will be held on Saturday 2nd November from 10:00 – 18:00

Participants

• Professionals working with young people in various settings, such as schools, youth centres, youth organisations, and education.
• Those with an interest in the intersection of climate and psychology.
• Individuals eager to learn how to support young people with climate emotions, particularly climate anxiety (also open for parents).

Programme

Session 1

• Introduction
• Overview of climate change
• The concept of climate anxiety

Session 2

• What are emotions, and why do we need them?
• How to normalise emotions
• Anxiety as a common response to the climate situation

Session 3

• How to manage difficult emotions: the CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) basic model
• Additional support measures
• Practical methods to relieve anxiety that can be used with young people

Session 4

• Practising the methods
• Self-care strategies
• Conclusion and wrap-up

Facilitators

The training will be facilitated by Claire Bonello & Annalise Falzon.

Claire Bonello is a psychology graduate with a Master of Science in Psychological Studies. Her academic and personal interests mainly lie in fields related to social psychology, together with the environment and education. Specifically, she is interested in the intersection between the environment and psychology, with a specific focus on eco-emotions, environmental attitudes and environment-related behaviour.

Having experience working with youths in a school setting, coordinating and facilitating workshops as part of a youth mental health campaign, and being a youth herself, Claire offers a fresh and experiential outlook on what it means to be a young person amidst environmental and social crises. Her research on the emotional responses to environmental crises within the Maltese population and the dissemination of such work among various professionals has emphasised the importance of having conversations about the emotional reactions of youths and beyond to such predicaments, alongside the accompanying cognitive and behavioural elements that form our environmental attitudes. Through her research and daily life endeavours, Claire has come to recognise the vital role that both individual and collective resilience, along with active hope, play in addressing a wide range of challenges—whether personal, interpersonal, environmental, or global.

She currently holds the positions of Administrative Secretary for the Malta Chamber of Psychologists and Mental Health Professional and Project Support for Friends of the Earth’s CALM-EY Project.

Annalise Falzon is a teacher of Geography, having also taught Environmental Science and is a licensed tourist guide (specialising in nature walks) and environmental educator having worked/volunteered/campaigned with various ENGOs and at numerous protected natural sites in the Maltese Islands.

She has been active with voluntary environmental NGO’s since the early 1990s namely in ARBOR, Marine Life Care Group and Society for the Study and Conservation of Nature (now collectively known as Nature Trust Malta), the Vegetarian Society of Malta, BirdLife Malta, The Gaia Foundation, Friends of the Earth Malta, The Malta Water Association, Ramblers Association of Malta, worked as a visitors’ guide at the Argotti Botanic Gardens and as a volunteer at WWF’s Miramare Marine Reserve, Trieste (Italy). In 2003 she co-authored “Malta, Gozo and Comino – Off the Beaten Track”, a Nature Trust guide for the local countryside, as well as a set of 8 walking guides for countryside walks with the Ministry of Gozo. Over the years she has contributed many sightings of rare and endangered species in the Maltese Islands (both terrestrial and marine flora and fauna) as well as taking part in citizen science projects on marine mammals, bats, pelagic seabirds (namely Yelkouan and Scopoli’s Shearwaters) and shark species. Her environmental work included widespread monitoring and reporting of illegal development and dumping, illegal hunting and trapping activities.

The event is fully booked. If you are interested in participating you can add your name to our waiting list and we will get back to you if we have any available slots.

The activity is co-funded by the European Union.

The Youth Programme of Friends of the Earth Malta is supported by Aġenzija Żgħażagħ through the INVEST Operational Grant 2023-2025