Changing Climate: Elevating Women and Youth as Agents of Action
While climate change is a universal and one of the most concerning challenges of our generation, climate action is driving significant green investments and transformations in our era. But is climate change affecting everyone the same way? What perspectives are missing while deploying these climate solutions and initiatives?
Growing up surrounded by nature, Cyntia Abarca became a sustainability enthusiast from a young age. However, she was unaware of the potential links between achieving gender equality, addressing the climate agenda, and building a sustainable future. These missing links and questions led her to explore the connections between women and climate. Her thesis, Changing Climate: Elevating Women and Youth as Agents of Action, presents five design interventions to address climate issues from a gender perspective, aiming to catalyze action while achieving gender equality from different fronts.
The project presents five design interventions to address climate issues from a gender perspective, aiming to catalyze action while achieving gender equality from different fronts.
Cyntia's work spans from educational platforms to tangible products designed for women facing climate-induced disasters. The collection of design tools she has created aspires to uplift women, aid vulnerable populations, and inspire the next generation, magnifying their role in addressing the complexities of the climate crisis.
Dandelight
Securing access in frontline communities presents significant challenges, from obtaining resources and communication to providing specific products for women and girls, with energy being crucial for access to all of these. Dandelight addresses both energy access and particular product needs for women. It is a basic emergency kit for women and young girls exposed to climate disasters and emergencies.
Menstrual essentials and energy represent much more than just a kit. Menstrual essentials equate to dignity for women, while energy symbolizes agency, communication, and access.
Dandelight includes essential menstrual products designed to last approximately three months, such as tampons, pads, towels, water purification tablets, flasks, and antiseptic wipes—necessary for proper menstrual care. It also features a solar panel charger and battery, complete with two phone charging cables: Type C and USB.
Steps
In the promising green economy, which is projected to create 155 million jobs by 2030, an alarming 90% of women lack essential green skills and experience. This gap is exacerbated by significant barriers such as a lack of role models, gender pay disparities, and an overwhelming influx of complex climate jargon that remains inaccessible to many.
Steps is a mentor-matching app, toolkit, and community designed for women who aspire to significantly impact the climate space. By offering support through mentorship and easy access to curated climate resources, Steps provides multiple pathways for women to navigate the climate sector, shift their careers into the green space, or advance their careers as they transition from one area of the climate sector to another.
Based on their climate interests and goals, mentees can find a mentor tailored to the specific help they seek. The platform encourages users to set particular targets and build meaningful relationships through feedback and collaboration. Given the cross-sectoral nature of climate work, mentors also have the opportunity to become mentees in other areas, allowing them to explore different paths and advance their careers.
The app also offers curated learning resources like easy-to-digest climate cards, making learning actionable and straightforward. Whether it's courses, podcasts, or lexicons, Steps partners with organizations and leverages AI to provide users with the best resources. Finally, collective steps, a supportive space, and a community for users to share best practices and mutual help.
These features make transitioning to the climate space as seamless as possible by offering a trustworthy community of mentors and reducing the time spent searching for climate content, thereby strengthening STEP's value proposition.
The Climate Intersection
The climate crisis is fundamentally a leadership crisis rooted in a patriarchal system. Instead of asking who holds leadership positions, the climate intersection seeks to highlight who is missing, which stories, voices, and policies should be amplified, and how to collaborate on both global and local scales to support gender initiatives and women, who are often the least represented in this space.
The climate crisis is fundamentally a leadership crisis rooted in a patriarchal system.
The Climate Intersection is a gender-focused platform and mapping tool that aims to actively engage organizations, volunteers, policymakers, and female advocates in climate leadership. Built on four pillars, the platform allows users to visualize data and track gender developments, amplify female voices by creating a database of women leaders and stories for climate negotiations, and explore gender-specific climate policies. Finally, it enables organizations to track other initiatives worldwide and scale partnerships to amplify their impact.
We Need to Talk: Climate Cocktails
Climate action needs a gender perspective to address the exacerbating conditions climate change creates for women across various fronts, including displacement, disease, poverty, health issues, and sexual violence, as well as the widening gap in accessing the green economy and participating in climate negotiations. However, this perspective should be more evident, and the lack of awareness among both men and women contributes to the problem. To address this, Cyntia designed a guided experience—We Need to Talk—that invites men, women, and other genders to discuss gender and climate, challenge stereotypes, and promote climate action.
Cyntia organized We Need to Talk on a sunny day in Long Island City, where over 25 participants from diverse cultures, countries, and backgrounds gathered to discuss climate and gender.
The event was divided into three sections:
Climate Crossroads: featuring seven stations with facts, data, and keywords related to the intersection of women, gender, and climate, where attendees engaged by highlighting words with stickers and writing their thoughts on post-it notes.
Conversation Compass: designed to foster dialogue in smaller groups using prompts, encouraging men and women to listen to different perspectives and discuss various scenarios.
Toast to Change: attendees raised a toast to change, chose a sustainable cocktail, and committed to taking climate action.
Green Minds
By reshaping narratives around gender norms from a young age and integrating climate discussions into early education, Cyntia emphasizes that we can address the root causes of climate action and gender inequality. With that in mind, she envisioned Green Minds, an educational and gamification app designed for teenagers between 12 and 17 to promote daily actions, climate literacy, and optimism.
Through daily missions and collective challenges—such as going plastic-free for two weeks or joining a climate debate at their local government—young people can learn about climate issues and take action at their own pace. They can also invite friends to join in on the same challenges and track their progress. Green Minds makes their climate journey exciting and irresistibly fun, showing how their efforts can inspire others, contribute to combating the climate crisis, and earn rewards and points to exchange for sustainable products.
To learn more about Cyntia Abarca’s work, take a look at her projects in more detail at cyntiaabarca.com.