These in-their-own-words pieces are told to Patricia Lane and co-edited with input from the interviewee for the purpose of brevity.

Jashan Gill helps young people process the emotional toll of climate change. As director of operations for Green Mind Canada, the 23-year-old from Brampton, Ont., works to normalize conversations about climate anxiety and provide youth with tools to transform worry into wellness and action.

Tell us about your project. 

We believe the climate crisis is as much an emotional and mental health crisis as an environmental one. Through workshops, art therapy videos, children's books and trauma-informed, culturally grounded toolkits, we support young people and children with processing their feelings without shame or dismissal and without pressure to save the world. 

Our work is grounded in youth voice, science and the honoured teachings of Indigenous knowledge keepers, whose practices of land-based stewardship, circle dialogue and collective care sit at the very heart of what we do.

We have partnerships with school districts in Toronto, Hamilton and Vancouver to facilitate in-class conversations with kids. We have published three children's books to provide stories of children contending successfully with climate anxiety. We recently released an animated film for young children, Ripples and the River of Trouble.

What impact are you having?

Our workshops have reached more than 10,000 children and youth. We have distributed more than 3,000 print and digital copies of our books. Our video has more than 800,000 views. Our tool kits are in demand from teachers and young adults who use them to host their own conversations. 

I have co-developed sustainability guidebooks and heat-health adaptation tool kits in collaboration with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, focused on improving access to cooling spaces and strengthening preparedness for medically vulnerable populations. I am also on the board of the Brampton Environmental Alliance, engaging local government on air quality, community health and accountability.

How did you get into this work?

Visiting rural Punjab in India as a child, I witnessed the despair people felt when land that once sustained families became unreliable. The emotional and mental distress was real, but rarely spoken about. Conversations around climate change and mental health rarely intersected. That’s when it clicked: climate change is a mental health issue, and we weren’t treating it like one. 

At McMaster University, I became deeply involved in sustainability initiatives, connecting students to advocacy resources, expanding access to carbon-neutral materials for marginalized youth, and helping build a more inclusive, environmentally conscious community. Concurrently, my research at CAMH, Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital, revealed the quiet weight many people carry in silence. Yet, something was missing. I was advocating for a healthier planet and for healthier people, but rarely acknowledging how the two were connected. It felt like I was living between two separate worlds, one focused on sustainability, the other on emotional well-being. 

Green Mind Canada was founded by Inaam Chattha, who recognized that while the environmental impacts of climate change were sometimes discussed in school, no one talked about how it made people feel. 

Becoming involved with Green Mind provided the opportunity I had been seeking to bring these two worlds together. 

The emotional trajectory of young people. I worry about what happens when a generation grows up feeling chronically unsafe about the future. I think about how inequity, extreme heat and wildfire smoke don't affect everyone equally. People with chronic illnesses, low-income families and newcomers carry disproportionate risk. I want to make sure our systems move fast enough to protect the most vulnerable.

Younger people. In our workshops, students walk in feeling reserved. But after they share their fears, dreams and stories about their families, they begin to realize their anxiety isn't weakness. It is evidence they care. Care is contagious. When young people are supported instead of silenced, that care becomes action.

What would you like to say to other young people?

You don't have to carry everything at once. Start local, start relational. Protect your nervous system. Burnout doesn't help the planet; resilience does. And remember: caring is not a weakness. Your empathy is your greatest asset. Find your people, build something meaningful together, and stay in it for the long term.

What about older readers? 

We want partnership. Climate change won't be solved by one generation. Create space in boardrooms, policy rooms and classrooms for youth voices to be heard as meaningful contributors, not symbolic additions. Climate resilience isn't just technological. It's relational. When generations work together, we build something more durable than policy alone. We build trust.

© National Observer