About Us

In our teenage years, each of us began working passionately in the pursuit of climate justice. The climate crisis is heavy to carry, but the world we are building is full of joy and hope. Our work in climate justice exists in the framework of building self-reliant communities that have the tools needed to care for each other and therefore withstand crisis. 

We work primarily in food security, an issue intrinsically connected to the climate crisis through natural disasters wrecking agricultural systems and grocery stores wasting millions of tonnes of good quality food yearly. Our work is encouraging people in our communities to take care of each other through community pantries and potlucks. We are continuing to work in all spheres which will improve the quality of life for our communities, including (un)natural disaster relief, direct solidarity with other marginalised and racialized communities, and community building events.

Our work in community care is deeply political. The government and systems that we rely on have been built to fail us, through unmitigated price gouging, through gutting social programs, and overall, a prioritization of profit over people. This is why our work encourages us to rely on each other– We will continue to lobby and protest these systems, but at the same time, we are taking building a better world into our own hands.

We start our work in Surrey because this is where we are from. Each of our members grew up attending these schools, playing in these parks, and entrenched in the culture of this place– our home. Our neighbourhoods are historically under-resourced and undervalued, despite this being one of the fastest growing and most diverse cities in so-called Canada. We’ve seen the struggles here, but we’ve also seen immense resilience and joy. We’ve seen and been a part of a beautiful community of people, and we are working to make sure our needs are all met.

  • Prioritizing accessible, engaging, and circular learning strategies, Climate Recentered offers a wide variety of community consultations to schools, clubs, organizations, and businesses of all sizes.
    We primarily focus on:

    • Working with young people to develop community initiatives to serve their schools and neighbourhoods.

    • Basic climate justice and community care frameworks for elementary school students, working to develop short or long-term projects with students that grow their critical problem solving, interpersonal communication, and creative thinking skills.

    • Consultations and curated resources for businesses looking to be more environmentally and locally friendly.

    • Workshops and discussion circles surrounding climate grief and anxiety where participants can collectively grieve, process, and heal.

    • Working with climate groups on how to tangibly incorporate intersectional and decolonial climate justice frameworks into their work.

    We’re dedicated to meeting people where they’re at and are happy to work with the specific needs and goals of a group that go beyond aforementioned work.

  • From our Community Fair Festivals initiative to our monthly potlucks, we know that some of the most important streets to take to in times of crisis are the ones we live, work, and learn on. Not just with signs and megaphones, but with a hot meal for your neighbour, a ride to the doctor’s office for a colleague, and offers of kindness that come from the same place of unity and solidarity that mass mobilizations do; Mutual aid is inherently political.

    An extra 5 dollars will always be best put towards people directly, so if you want to support our movement, @redistributeurwealth on Instagram and Operation Olive Branch are great places to start.

  • “If you could give/build anything at all for your community, with unlimited time and resources, what would it be?” is the question that guided months of research engaging with Surrey residents. Alongside this question, we looked in depth at how residents have coped with the pandemic, the rising cost of groceries and food, and recent extreme weather events.

    Our method of outreaching to participants primarily came from community engagement that also served as both the incubators and actualizations of the ideas of community members. For example, our youth basketball tournament was thought of by youth we had previously engaged with in high schools, who has expressed interest in converting parking lots into courts when they were not in use.

    We’re currently writing and illustrating at thorough report on our research for public availability— stay tuned!

Climate Recentered in the Media

Meet the Team

Zoha Faisal

Zoha is a 17 year old climate justice organizer who has worked in the past with Sustainabiliteens, UBC Centre for Climate Change, and the Mental Health and Climate Change Alliance. She will be attending UBC in the fall in the Faculty of Sciences.

Naisha Khan

Naisha is a 21 year old climate justice organizer and cooperative developer at Solid State Community Industries. She has worked for David Suzuki Foundation, co-founded Change Course, and goes to school full-time at UBC.

Dana Cachero

Dana Cachero is an 18 year old climate justice organizer attending UBC in the fall in the fall. She used to organize for Sustainabiliteens and was part of community leadership at her high school.

Arshia Uppal

Arshia is a 22 year old organizer who founded Reverse the Climate Clock, was a core organizer with Sustainabiliteens, and co-founder of Climate Recentered. She is a current university student studying environmental sciences.