UCalgary initiative turns immigrant youth into community climate champions

For many immigrant high-school students, climate change isn’t a day-to-day priority. They know the issue is real and urgent, but they don’t see how it affects them personally and aren’t sure how to get involved. 

According to Dr. Turin Chowdhury, PhD, including immigrant youth in climate action is essential to the future of climate advocacy. It’s a matter of perspective.

“Having experienced life in different parts of the world, they have seen firsthand how environmental conditions are changing across places. That perspective gives them unique insight into climate change, even when its impacts aren’t always apparent in the place they now call home, Canada,” says Chowdhury, a University of Calgary professor and assistant dean of Graduate Science Education with the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM).

Supported by a Mobilizing Alberta Climate Action Grant in 2025, he looked to understand how immigrant youth see climate change. Could it become a relevant issue that empowered them to become climate champions?

Chowdhury leads the Refugee and Immigrant Student Empowerment (RISE) Initiative. It’s a program that engages youth on topics from health and wellness to leadership and research skills. Launched at UCalgary in 2016 as a community capacity-building initiative, it grew out of work led by Chowdhury and colleagues at the CSM working to better understand the health and wellness needs of immigrant and refugee communities. Working alongside them, researchers not only provided information, but involved immigrant youth in identifying issues and shaping solutions.

Last year, Chowdhury worked with UCalgary student volunteers on a series of activities for youth on climate literacy and social issues through inquiry-based and experiential learning, research and one-on-one mentorship. 

Rather than simply having students attend workshops, for example, RISE has involved former participants as “community champions” who help shape the next year's programming. RISE’s climate change literacy initiative engaged participants to explore their perceptions and understanding of climate change, climate action and climate justice. The initiative reflects RISE’s broader approach of creating opportunities for immigrant youth to share their perspectives and engage with issues that affect their communities.

To facilitate, RISE partnered with the Foundation for the Voice of Immigrants in Canada for Empowerment and the Calgary Bridge Foundation for Youth. These relationships were essential to engaging with the community, reaching more than 500 individuals.

The experience had a major impact on researchers, students and youth by increasing awareness and fostering meaningful engagement by connecting global climate narratives with local experiences.

A leadership opportunity for UCalgary students

RISE also encourages UCalgary student volunteers to nurture their leadership and curriculum-development skills by leading workshops, providing youth mentorship and conducting focus groups. 

Aria Ahadzadeh Ardebili, BHSc’22, a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering, volunteered with RISE after learning about the barriers to higher education and academia that youth can experience in Canada. Ahadzadeh was surprised how much he learned from the experience. He says volunteering with RISE made him a better researcher and able to communicate his research more effectively.

“The UCalgary volunteers grow just as much as the youth do,” he says. “We are used to presenting to other researchers, but it’s different with people outside of academia. Because of all the conversations we were having with the high-school students, we got a lot more comfortable making our ideas digestible for the public .” 

The Mobilizing Alberta Climate Action Grant allowed RISE to add a research component that explored how immigrant youth could become climate champions within their communities. More than 20 student volunteers from multiple faculties gained hands-on skills and one-on-one mentoring that fostered deeper relationships and personalized learning.

When Chowdhury and Ahadzadeh created a space of belonging for immigrant youth to connect their experiences from their home with climate-change discussions in Canada, the research team saw climate change evolve from being a distant issue to something more relevant to the young participants. Some students became researchers, while others applied newly developed public speaking and science-literacy skills to translate scientific information for members of their community.

“They started getting it, and the conversation shifted,” Chowdhury says. “They became climate literacy champions, and they have much more impact on their communities to make change happen.”