Sustyvibes was created in Lagos, in 2016, with a mission to make sustainability both cool and actionable for Nigerian youths. A few years later, despite Sustyvibe's success, some of the founders and team members felt that dealing with the issue of climate change was harming their own mental health. They wondered whether this was happening to others and did a survey: it found out that 66% of young people were experiencing some form of eco-anxiety, and over 40 % thought they didn't have the resources or support to overcome it.
The Eco-Anxiety Africa Project (TEAP) was born from that, in 2022.
Eco-anxiety is different in Africa
Svetlana Chigozie Onye, who leads the projects, describes eco-anxiety as a range of emotions that people feel in relation to climate change: fear, anger, grief, hopelessness, solastalgia... According to her, "eco-anxiety manifests itself differently across Africa because climate events are happening quickly, and young people are also facing different issues like political instability and poverty, and they have neither the social capital nor the support they would need. All of this affects their ability to recover from, and thrive in the context of climate change, and it does have mental health impacts", sometimes reaching pathological levels: depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidal thoughts, etc.
Research remains a pillar of TEAP, which cooperates with several international research projects. One of them, Anchor, is about "aiding African mental health professionals in learning more about the connection between climate change, environmental issues, and our psychological well-being."
Safe spaces to share and process emotions
"We have to consider the stigma that exists on mental health in many African communities, where you're expected to just survive and go through life", says Svetlana. "As we started to do youth-led gatherings, we had to help the participants identify themselves within the definitions of eco-emotions we gave them. When we provide that educational element, they are often able to say 'this is exactly what I'm feeling'". Young people, particularly teenagers, "don't want to say anything if their friend hasn't said something. So, for example, we play a video of someone else speaking about how they're feeling anxiety, grief and pain, because then they can realize that it's okay to feel that too."
From this experience, TEAP has also developed a growing activity: ZenCafe, whose goal is to allow young participants to express their emotions, accept them, share them, and ultimately cope with them. "Young people come to Lagos, or meet virtually, and we use guided questions to let them vent about their experiences of climate change, talk about eco-anxiety and then find hope", explains Svetlana. "We build resilience through individual practices like mindfulness, but also, in Nigeria where storytelling, music and dance are so important to find joy and reprieve from pain, we also try to bring those practices into our youth gatherings". Since religion plays such a big part in the everyday life of Nigerians, ZenCafes can also invite those who want it to pray. "We also try to bring elders to talk about how they have been able to build hope despite what has happened. What did they experience of nature in the past that is now changing? Seeing your elders being able to speak about the loss that they're also experiencing because of climate change validates youth's emotions and also gives them the opportunity to verbalize their pain."
The program has been so successful, that TEAP is now working on multiplying ZenCafes in Nigeria and beyond, via a training and grants program called Zen Guardians. After two weeks' training, the Zen Guardians are capable of setting up and running their own ZenCafes where they live, be it in Kampala (Uganda) or Johannesburg (South Africa).
Raising awareness of the mental health effects of climate change
TEAP's last line of activity is directed towards policymakers, in order to make them aware of the mental health impact of climate change, and the fact that mental health is and will be a major part of climate recovery.