Centering language and culture in climate engagement

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Three presenters on stage at an event
Credit: Save the Sound

On a sunny fall afternoon, an intergenerational group of dozens of Latine community members descended upon Bregamos Community Theater for Mic at the Mill, a bilingual storytelling event organized by Drawdown’s Neighborhood interviewee and community leader Xóchitl Garcia as part of Save the Sound’s Urban Waters Initiative, in partnership with Women Without Borders, Semilla Collective, and Project Drawdown’s storytelling program. 

Alex Rodriguez, another local leader featured in Drawdown’s Neighborhood: Tri-State docuseries, served as co-host. As Project Drawdown’s director of storytelling and engagement, I served as a guest speaker. For the first time, because of the largely Spanish-speaking audience, I presented about the power of storytelling with the support of an interpreter and with Spanish captions on my slides and videos. 

Alex opened the event with a powerful reminder: “When we build community,” he shared, from his perspective as the environmental justice specialist at Save the Sound and a Connecticut native, “we share love, we share stories, we share community, and we also share power... We are building community because Mother Earth’s problems are too big for one person to tackle alone.”

That’s something that those in attendance, impacted by redlining, flooding of the Mill River, and other environmental hazards, know all too well. Folks in Fair Haven – which is historically predominantly Black and Latine – know the importance of togetherness in shaping the future they want for themselves and their children.

One way Xóchitl has catalyzed that togetherness is through the UWI PhotoVoice project, which captures both the environmental hazards and features of the Fair Haven community. The project received more than 100 photos from Fair Haven residents. Ultimately, the team curated 50 images that paint a fuller picture of opportunities to better the community from the community’s point of view. The PhotoVoice project was a first-of-its-kind effort to build a collective vision for the local environment.

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Children at an event in New Haven writing on a poster that reads Rename Your Park

Local youth weigh in on the name for a new green space in New Haven.

At Mic at the Mill, Xóchitl, Alex, and the Urban Waters Initiative continued engaging Fair Haven residents in a vision for the future, particularly for the Mill River. The event showcased photos of green and blue spaces from the PhotoVoice project and invited attendees to change the name of their local parks to ones that better reflected their community. In addition, the event brought the photos to life through music, dances, and songs performed by local community members.

“When we think of the environment and justice, we think of two separate images,” Xóchitl reflected.

Language and culture are power. They shape how we view the world and ourselves.

As the crowd nodded, she stressed how much language matters to make inclusion and justice possible. At times, the environmental movement can leave people behind by not meeting them where they are or in the language that most resonates with them. That’s the critical importance of Xóchitl’s contributions as “a multi-passionate Indigenous woman who is culturally and linguistically bridging communities together,” as she shared in her episode of Drawdown’s Neighborhood.

As a native of Fair Haven, growing up in a community plagued by “white flight”, Xóchitl experienced the disinvestment in the local Latine community firsthand. This not only brought her closer to the problems but also to the solutions, one of which is building community power. Mic at the Mill, part of a summer-long event series, was an opportunity to center local voices and ensure the Latine community isn’t an afterthought in the climate conversation.

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Matt Scott on-stage at an event

Matt Scott on-stage at Mic at the Mill.

Credit: Save the Sound
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Xóchitl Garcia hosting a community event

Xóchitl Garcia, Drawdown’s Neighborhood climate hero and interviewee with Save the Sound’s Urban Waters Initiative works to connect youth with green spaces in her local community.

Language and culture are power. They shape how we view the world and ourselves. When we default to a single language, we may keep communities integral to advancing climate solutions at a distance, whether we intend to or not. Xóchitl and Alex’s work provides space for people to define their climate experiences and emotions in their authentic voice and inspires us at Project Drawdown as we strive to provide more accessible content – whether updating episodes of Drawdown’s Neighborhood and Climate Solutions 101 with Spanish captions or providing a built-in language translator on our website.

Seeing communities convene around climate solutions always fills me with hope. Being part of Mic at the Mill, I saw how Xóchitl, Alex, and their partners work to center those who are too often excluded from the climate space. It reminded me that there are even more people ready to contribute to climate solutions as long as they have the opportunity and we remember to meet them where they are.


Matt Scott is the director of storytelling and engagement at Project Drawdown, where he leverages his expertise in human-centered design and storytelling to pass the mic to those who often go unheard in the climate space. He is the creator and host of the Drawdown’s Neighborhood climate solutions short docuseries, and leads the Drawdown Stories program.

This work was published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. You are welcome to republish it following the license terms.

Editor's Note: As Matt mentioned in this article, Project Drawdown aims to enhance inclusion in the climate conversation by making our site accessible in nine different languages. Click on the globe icon next to the search button at the top of this page to learn more.