Climate Fresk for Team-Building: Breaks Ice and Sets Tone for TWYCC’s New Focus on Net-Zero
A Climate Fresk workshop — a climate science-focused group activity — was held for TWYCC members following the 2023 kick-off assembly on March 12, giving the new teams of TWYCC an opportunity to break the ice and setting the tone for the organization’s new focus on the Net-Zero topic for the upcoming years.
On March 12, TWYCC hosted its 2023 kick-off assembly for the new teams and members of 2023. TWYCC also announced its new plans and strategies, including a focus on Taiwan’s Net-Zero climate target in the coming years.
Following the assembly, a “Climate Fresk” workshop was held for TWYCC members as an ice-breaking activity as well as an opportunity to enhance their knowledge of climate science.
Climate Fresk Introduction
Who is Climate Fresk and when did they come to Taiwan?
Climate Fresk is an NGO founded in France in 2018. It trains facilitators and conducts workshops worldwide to raise awareness of climate change. According to the Climate Fresk website, workshops have been hosted in 50 countries for over 800,000 participants.
Climate Fresk volunteers started hosting workshops in Taiwan in the last quarter of 2022 and have been contacting different organizations and training local facilitators. For most TWYCC members, it was their first time participating in a Climate Fresk Workshop.
What is a Climate Fresk workshop and how was it done?
In Chinese, the Climate Fresk workshop is usually referred to as a “氣候桌遊” (Climate board game) and it is currently translated as “氣候拼圖” (Climate Puzzle). However, this activity does not really include competition or getting points, or finding a winner. It is more of a group activity that needs active discussions and reasoning by group members.
Each group — with the guidance of a Climate Fresk facilitator — has to sort out the causal relationships among 42 climate-related phenomena/events drawn from the IPCC report printed on cards. After sorting out the relationships, each group will have made a collage of climate events and will have to come up with a name for their “Fresk” (collage).
You may learn more about the Climate Fresk activity and organization in the following video:
Climate Fresk — From the View of Participants
What kind of names did you come up with for your Fresk?
After making the collage, many members expressed their frustration with the horrific climate impacts caused by humans. Each group came up with very creative but alarming names for their collages.
“The name of our Fresk is called ‘the consequences we don’t want to see’,” shared Renesmee Chen, a member of the International Affairs Team, “because climate change has brought disasters to humankind, and these are the consequences that we don’t want to see.”
Joann Cheng, a member of Medium Team, said their Fresk is named “The messy world is so freaking messy” because she found that lining up cards on a poster could not capture the complicated relationship among climate-related phenomena. “One cause does not necessarily only have one consequence, and a consequence of a phenomenon could also be a cause of another phenomenon/other phenomena,” she added.
How did the Climate Fresk workshop enhance your climate science knowledge?
As the Climate Fresk intro video mentioned, the activity was designed to help participants gain insights into “the functioning of climate and the consequences of its disruption” based on climate science drawn from IPCC reports. For many members, the subject of climate change was not provided in the education system, therefore, this was a special opportunity for them to learn about climatic processes more thoroughly.
“Before playing Climate Fresk, I think I only had a rough idea about climate change like most people,” shared Kristen Lei, a member of the Climate Campaign Team and Medium Team. “But after the game, I learned more details and different aspects of global warming.”
Renesmee also shared that “after sorting out the cards and thinking it through, the relationships among the climate-related phenomena have also become clearer to me.”
Climate Fresk — From the View of a Facilitator
Why did you become a facilitator? What was facilitating a Climate Fresk Workshop like?
The Climate Fresk Workshop held on March 12 was run by around five volunteer facilitators. Among the facilitators, Dominique Wong is also a member of TWYCC; he is a member of TWYCC’s board committee, and he has years of experience in TWYCC and taking part in climate movements.
Dominique shared that one of the biggest challenges that he has always had was how to improve communication about climate change with people. When he played Climate Fresk for the first time, he immediately thought that this could be a very helpful tool for spreading climate knowledge and improving climate change communication.
“[Climate Fresk] makes climate science fun, relatable, straightforward, emotional, and logical,” Dominique said. Therefore, he decided to become a Climate Fresk facilitator and hopes to spread climate knowledge to more people and inspire them for taking climate action.
This time, it was Dominique’s first time facilitating a group. What he was impressed with the most was how the participants celebrated after sorting out the cards. “Even though the structure of cards is quite fixed, all groups presented [their collages] with a lot of creativity.”
Who do you think Climate Fresk is for?
No matter the age, the profession of people, or even the level of climate knowledge, “Climate Fresk is for everyone”, says Dominique. “It is for beginners to learn the causes and consequences of climate-related phenomena; it is for experienced activists to practice working with others reasoning climate change; it is for experts to reflect on how climate knowledge and information can be conveyed in a way that is fun and easy to understand.”
“Climate science is hard and tough, it is devastating to sink it in alone;” added Dominique. “Having a group of people to go through the process of understanding how screwed we are is really a relief at the end.”
Setting the Tone for TWYCC’s New Focus on Net-Zero
After each group has completed their climate collage, every participant was asked to think about and write down the climate actions that they could take. All the members came up with different kinds of climate actions, from individual actions like eating less meat and riding more bikes to more collective and influential actions like taking part in climate education, awareness-raising campaigns, working in companies that help other companies to decarbonize, etc.
For TWYCC and many members, the Climate Fresk activity was not only an ice-breaker and an exercise to enhance climate knowledge, but it was also an important opportunity to set the tone for TWYCC’s coming focus on Taiwan’s Net-Zero climate target. Many members reflected on the climate actions they would like to take and aligned them with their personal expectations and goals of joining TWYCC in 2023. A few members would like to carry out their intended climate action collectively with TWYCC fellow members and as part of the organization.
In addition, Climate Fresk helped form a common ground for different teams and members by delivering a common message that “climate change is bringing horrific consequences at a global scale and therefore we have to start taking action against it.” As Kristen reflected after the workshop, “though we can’t change the past, we could at least do something for the future to prevent climate change from getting worse.” This message implies the importance and imperative of taking effective climate action — achieving the Net-Zero target by 2050. Therefore, this event could help align teams’ and members’ expectations on TWYCC’s focus on Net-Zero and potentially enhance future cooperation.
Author: Ann Wu