ClimAction: Youth Changemaker Activation for Climate-Resilient Futures

‍

Young changemakers applied systems thinking, co-creation, and capacity-building in a climate resilience initiative, enabling communities and local leaders to anticipate climate risks, adapt, and implement solutions.

Partners:

• Nestle Philippines

Project Duration: 2023

Capabilities Delivered:

Seeing Systems: Systems Thinking

Designing Change: Learning Experience Design for Youth Leadership Life-Centred Design

The Landscape

In the Philippines, climate change is immediate—rising seas, stronger storms, and worsening heat and drought threaten communities daily. CLIMACTION: Towards a Net Zero Philippines - launched by the Climate Change Commission in partnership with Nestlé Philippines and GMA Network ahead of COP28, brings together government, business, agriculture, youth, and communities in a shared effort to cut emissions by 43% by 2030. The initiative empowers young leaders with tools, methods, and collaborative approaches to co-create climate-smart solutions and champion sustainable futures in their communities.

‍

The Challenge

How can we empower young people with the knowledge and design tools to transform climate urgency into community-relevant action, - anchored in empathy, grounded in practice, and built to be shared?

While national adaptation strategies exist, many remain abstract for the people and communities most at risk. Young leaders, local organizations, and communities want to take action—but often lack the tools, methods, and shared language to translate climate priorities into concrete, human-centered solutions.

The KindMind Lens

In partnership with Nestlé, KindMind - guided by its systemic approach of Braver Business by Design - designed a creative, collaborative workshop rooted in Life-Centered Design to strengthen and support CLIMACTION. A digital toolkit as a pre-work material to empower individuals and groups to connect national climate adaptation priorities with local, people-centered solutions,

Guiding Transformation

• Contextualized Climate Priorities – Translated PNAP data on food security, biodiversity, and circular economy into digestible insights for youth, NGOs, and local groups.
  
  
• Introduced Life-Centred Design – A contextualization of Human-Centred Design to encompass the wellbeing of not just people but also the planet and all the species that live in it.  We provided a primer on the five stages of Empathy – Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test – with emphasis on Empathy with people and ecosystem habitats and species as the foundation for climate action.
  
  
• Designed a Research Safari – A field guide that encouraged participants to “walk in another person's shoes or species body” ” through observations, interviews, and contextual inquiry into how climate change affects everyday life.
  
  
• Provided Editable Tools – Included printable research plans, interview guides, and note-taking templates to lower barriers to action.
  
  
• Anchored on Collaboration – Positioned ClimAction not just as a toolkit, but as a platform for shared learning, encouraging users to bring their insights back into group discussions (e.g., ClimTalks 2023).

The Systemic Impact

• From Framework to Toolkit: Turning Climate Priorities Into Local Action
  KindMind created the ClimAction Digital Toolkit, a learning journey and action guide that connected the Philippine National Adaptation Plan (PNAP) to local realities. Centered on life-centered design, it expanded design thinking to include the wellbeing of people and planet. A Research Safari guide equipped youth and local leaders with mindsets, methods, and editable tools—such as interview guides, research plans, and templates - to lower barriers to action.

‍

• Empowering Youth and Local Leaders
  The toolkit and workshop activated youth and community leaders with practical methods for empathy-driven climate research. By linking PNAP priorities with the lived realities of farmers, fisherfolk, and vulnerable groups, it created a shared language for resilience and enabled systemic, community-driven solutions.

‍

• Collaborative Workshop and Cultural Shift
  Through co-design, the workshop turned climate data into actionable insights, sparking new solution pathways in regenerative agriculture, ecosystem restoration, and stakeholder engagement. It fostered a cultural shift by embedding design thinking mindsets into climate resilience work and building momentum for collaborative action.

The Systemic Agenda

ClimAction demonstrates that climate resilience is not only about policies and infrastructure, but also about mindsets, empathy, and design capacity. By equipping youth and communities with tools to observe, listen, and co-create, the Philippines gains more than a plan; it gains a generation of climate actors ready to shape adaptive, inclusive, and regenerative futures.

In a KindMind-facilitated space equipped with tools for collaboration, systems learning, experience design, and strategic convening aligned local action with planetary resilience - contributing to the collective resilience and equity

SDG 13, 3, 4, 17

‍

About the Program

Climate Change Commission (CCC) and Nestlé PH, with the support of the GMA Network, today hosted “CLIMACTION Towards A Net Zero Philippines.” CLIMACTION involved multi-stakeholder exchanges on implementing the Philippine National Adaptation Plan (PNAP) and the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for reducing GHGs.

‍