Empowering Youth through Environmental Storytelling

Introducing the “EYES on Climate” Podcast

EYES on Climate is a podcast on how educators can and should teach climate change. We talk with experts in education, climate, and journalism, about how we can empower youth to activate their knowledge and create change through storytelling.

Episode 01: How to Teach About the Climate Crisis and the Media’s Power and Problem

In Episode 1, host Amina McCauley, News Decoder’s program manager for climate journalism, speaks with The Climate Academy founder Matthew Pye and News Decoder Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner. The discussion explores how we can use the tools of journalism and storytelling to activate students’ knowledge about the systems driving the climate crisis; how the Civil Rights Movement stands as a historic example of how radical change is possible when people come together to change a system; and why we shouldn’t shy away from encouraging students to engage in meaningful action.

Listen to EYES On Climate on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud.

Co-funded by the European Union. Project code: 2023-1-BE01-KA220-SCH-000155844

The EYES Educators’ Guide to Teaching Systems-Level Climate Change

How to include systems thinking, systemic solutions, and a justice lens when teaching about the climate crisis.

This guide was created through the collective work, reflections and notes of fourteen educators from across Europe who took part in the EYES Educators’ Workshop on Climate Storytelling in October 2025 in Brussels.

Over three days, educators explored a wide range of approaches and challenges to climate change education, each session offering new tools, perspectives, and ways of better equipping young people to understand current crises and shape their future.

The EYES workshop covered:

• Systems thinking in climate education;
• The use of storytelling and journalism as learning tools;
• The foundations of climate change science;
• The complexities of climate injustice;
• Alternative economic thinking such as Doughnut economics and degrowth;
• The biodiversity crisis and its interconnections with the climate crisis;
• The role of frameworks such as GreenComp in building sustainability competences.

Participants also reflected on their trajectories as changemakers in the professional, civic and personal spheres of their lives and experimented with practical exercises – from playing Pathbreak Biodiversity Jenga to interviewing one another as journalists and deliberating about shaping sectors in the economy.

This guide is the result of that shared learning process. Throughout the three days, participants gathered in smaller groups to reflect on the workshop’s content and to share challenges and ideas, based on professional experiences and on the innovative content of the workshop.

This guide brings together the main insights on teaching climate change, climate justice, systems change, degrowth and fostering student engagement through storytelling. This guide is the culmination of the Empowering Youth through Environmental Storytelling (EYES) project, an Erasmus+ co-funded collaboration between The Environment and Human Rights Academy, News Decoder, and the Young Educators European Association.

The EYES Educators’ Guide to Teaching Systems-Level Climate Change