About Our Work
CLIMATE CAFE LA is a place-based organizing initiative to facilitate community-based mental health practices and engagements with a focus on environmental awareness. Climate Cafe LA facilitates practices and experiences that unite people to help them find joy, wellbeing, and community around environmental and social issues.
What is a climate cafe?
Climate Cafes were conceived by the Climate Psychology Alliance and are a grassroots community-care practice. In cafe sessions, participants are invited to share their thoughts and feelings about climate change without judgment or pressure. The lightly-facilitated sessions are community-led and come with no call to action attached. Rather, the practice is intended to help communities find grounding and validation for difficult emotional experiences that have resulted from climate and social crises and create space to process those feelings in community. While recognizing the importance of action, cafes offer respite from the busyness of our lives and offer a chance to glimpse at our own inner emotional landscapes in an uplifting environment.
Why does Climate Cafe LA exist?
In the face of present and future crises, it has become clear that some level of adaptation will have to occur. In preparation, we cannot continue waiting for the same technological, ecological, and political solutions that have largely failed to materialize. We realize that community and connection are tools available to all. Climate Cafe LA exists to help remind us of those tools and learn how we may access them ourselves to build fulfilling and resilient relationships in our communities.
With the rise of two monumental public health challenges, the climate and mental health crises, our work focuses on creating spaces and experiences that help people rediscover joy, connection, and passion while we work to build cultures and societies where human and planetary wellbeing is centered. Our work includes Climate Cafe offerings in addition to other workshops, events, and engagements in Los Angeles and in virtual settings.
Who runs Climate Cafe LA?
The Climate Cafe practice itself is a democratic and grassroots community-care practice. As facilitators, we more closely resemble budding mushrooms from a mycelium network than a traditional top-down leadership approach. With that being said, the Climate Cafe LA initiative and its additional offerings are led by Maksim Batuyev and Cindy Pace.
Maksim is an artist and activist whose work focuses on engaging the broader public on climate issues. He serves as the communications director for the Queer Brown Vegan platform and a Gen Z advisor for the Climate Mental Health Network. His past work has encompassed political organizing, food systems, sustainable fashion, and mental health initiatives. He's worked with activists and founders like Clover Hogan, Kevin J Patel, and Steven Donziger to help elevate important messages through digital mediums and he continues to offer freelance support to other activists and organizations. He received his B.S. in Environmental Studies and Sustainability before helping Clover Hogan launch Force of Nature in 2020.
Cindy Pace is a climate communicator working to advance wildfire and climate resiliency efforts in Southern California. She serves as a lead facilitator for Climate Cafe LA and a Gen Z advisor for the Climate Mental Health Network. She received her B.S. in Sustainability Studies in 2022.