Youth Voices on Climate From Religious and Spiritual Perspectives

• Madeline Canfield, Jewish Youth Climate Movement/ Adamah 
• Alethea Phillips, Earth Guardians, Native Youth Alliance
• Aashna Patel, Hindu Climate Action UK
• Aly Tharp, GreenFaith USA

About our speakers

Madeline Canfield is the Organizing Coordinator for the Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM), a project of Adamah. She joined Adamah with a background in youth climate justice activism, having previously organized with the Sunrise Movement, co-founded Houston Youth Climate Strike, co-led the Youth Working Group for the City of Houston Climate Action Plan, and served on the Zero Hour Partnerships Team. She is currently a student at Brown University, where she studies English.

Aashna Patel is representing Hindu Climate Action, UK, an NGO dedicated to mobilizing Hindu communities for climate action. Having actively served within the organization for nearly three years, Aashna has primarily focused on harnessing the potential of temples (Mandirs) to drive climate action among Hindu communities. She is particularly interested in the potential for extracting valuable environmental insights from ancient Hindu traditions, and learning from previous generations in the modern world. She has recently completed an MSc in Environment, Politics, and Development from King’s College London, where her thesis explored the intricate relationship between Hindu values, plant-based diets, environmental sustainability, and animal welfare. Currently, she works as a Policy Delivery Lead for health services in Wales within the Welsh Government. 

Alethea Phillips is an Indigenous and environmental rights activist from the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska and Iowa. She is 22, and serves as the Lead Organizer of Native Youth Alliance. At 17 she spent the winter at the “evictions” at the Standing Rock Prayer Camps where she began her work with media at the MASH (Media Artist Serving Humanity) tent. She has worked within Indigenous, divestment, and anti-extraction movements for the past 3 years. She began working within a global platform when she represented her organization at the United Nations Indigenous Peoples Permanent Forum (UNPPF). She has spoken the past two years at the UNPPF about protection of Indigenous land from extraction industries, and indigenous language preservation. She has worked globally as a Delegate in SustainUS first ever all Indigenous delegation to COP25. She has worked with youth within her own tribal community and nationally on encouraging youth leadership, and organizing youth led movements.

Aly Tharp (she/they) joined GreenFaith as US Senior Organizer in May 2022, where she organizes with diverse faith communities and leaders to end the era of fossil fuels through public action and engagement in the frontline-led People vs Fossil Fuels campaign. Aly is a Lay Community Minister in the Unitarian Universalist (UU) tradition, and previously served as the Co-Director of the UU Ministry for Earth and manager of the denomination’s Commit2Respond and Create Climate Justice campaigns. Aly has been active in numerous climate justice campaigns since 2012, shortly after graduating from Austin College with a B.A. in Environmental Studies. Her climate movement work centers around arts and cultural organizing and non-violent direct action. Aly is also a local food justice organizer in Austin, Texas, serving as a volunteer leader with the Serefina Food Pantry and Festival Beach Food Forest, a free-to-the-public edible and medicinal landscape on public parkland.

ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL interviews and dialogues are ongoing programs produced by the Temple of Understanding, incorporating our outreach in the area of environmental awareness and advocacy. We present a diverse range of perspectives, from scientific to spiritual views, on the climate emergency and offer a variety of solutions that we can all do easily and effectively in our everyday lives. World religious and spiritual visionaries, Indigenous leaders, scientists and social scientists, environmental activists, artists, musicians and writers, youth and elders, local and global people, all come together to address the urgency of the climate crisis through these ongoing interviews and dialogues.

See all our programs on our ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL youtube channel.