How studying climate action is helping one grad to support her community

As a resident of Whistler, B.C., for more than half her life, Lisa Severn wants the community she loves to continue to thrive. Thanks to SFU’s Climate Action Certificate, she now has ideas on how her community can create sustainable solutions to any issues they may face.

Over the last number of years, Lisa has worked as a communications and community engagement specialist for a local charity and as a freelancer for charities, non-profits, agencies and farmers.

When she discovered the Climate Action program online, Lisa saw an opportunity to combine her communication skills with her lifelong interest in environmental work. She’d once even started a degree in environmental studies but was unable to finish. Now, with the introduction of the StrongerBC future skills grant, she finally had the financial means to study an area she’d always been passionate about. 

“There was never any kind of programming around climate issues, so I was always looking for it,” she recalls. “I was excited when something finally came up that was relatively local but also accessible online.”

For Lisa, the program solidified her interest in building community resilience. Within her role at the Whistler Community Foundation, an organization that provides grants to charities who support environmental and social action, she had led the production of a report for Whistler’s Vital Signs project. Dialogue events for the project were organized based around the data collected for the report. The key goal of the report and dialogue was to support local solutions to community issues. 

After speaking with attendees at events, Lisa noticed the intersections between climate resilience and responses to other issues such as the housing crisis. Housing is more than putting a roof over someone’s head, she realized. It’s about giving people access to the things they need and providing living spaces that are sustainable and economical.

“I really thought about the climate crisis or climate action as black and white, like either you’re for the environment or against the environment,” Lisa says.

“There’s so much nuance, and our instructors talked about mental models on how to help people react to certain situations based on understandings of their worldview.”

Lisa appreciates how her instructors encouraged her to broaden her thinking, especially as she prepares to host a future climate action dialogue session with the Vital Signs project. She credits the Climate Action program with furthering her understanding of the ways that equity and climate action go hand in hand.

“The program added so much value to working in communications that I didn’t expect. I was already on the path of thinking about some of these things, but these courses really challenged me.”

Having completed the SFU program, Lisa is now ready for her next challenge, whatever that may be. “I think the work focused around community resilience and community action against climate change has put me in a better position to understand problem-solving,” she says.

“I don’t know what the future looks like,” adds Lisa, “but I think I now have a better sense of what I’m capable of doing and my skills.”

By Bernice Puzon