“Even the Small Work That I Do, It Has Impact, It Has Meaning”: Collective Meaning-Making in Youth Climate Groups

Abstract

This article focuses on participation in youth-led climate-oriented groups and the role of this form of civic engagement for young people. Thirty interviews were conducted with 13- to 18-year-olds belonging to four groups: Extinction Rebellion Youth, Sustainabiliteens, Sunrise Movement, or school-affiliated clubs. The participants had been part of their group for an average of 1.5 years, coming from either the United States (n = 26) or Canada (n = 4). They were predominantly female (n = 22), with a few male (n = 5) and a small number identifying as non-binary (n = 3). Significant in the thematic analysis was the critical role of increased meaning-making, which involved relationship-building, processing emotions, and taking action. The peer-led group settings served to create community, work through the range of emotions the climate crisis evoked, and generate actions that felt purposeful at both the individual and collective levels. In these spaces, young people seek meaning together, and they propose and demand action from governmental bodies and corporations on climate change. Through everyday activism, young people express an ecocitizenship that is constructive, hopeful, and generative. In a world characterized by the climate crisis, joining and contributing to youth-led climate groups is becoming part of young people’s identity development, a way of enacting citizenship and expressing political agency.

1. Introduction

In unprecedented ways, the mobilization of young people on the pressing issue of the climate crisis has made international headlines (Cowan et al. 2023; Khan and Nuermberger 2022; Neas 2022; Neas et al. 2022; Poot and Bauwens 2023; Santos et al. 2024). The myriad youth-led climate strikes being held globally and the young people taking their governments to court demanding action have galvanized the public and researchers to recognize their agency (United Nations 2023). Young people who have joined various youth-led climate groups are defying the portrayal of youth as passive, apolitical, and self-centered (Han and Ahn 2020; Thew et al. 2020). However, the role and significance of joining a climate action group for high-school-aged young people are not yet well understood. Therefore, we question: how do young people experience their participation in these groups? This inquiry is timely, given that young people’s growing responses to the climate crisis are being recognized as having the potential to be transformational (Tattersall et al. 2022; Trott 2021). The present study draws on interviews with 30 young people (13 to 18 years old) who have been members of youth-led climate organizations for an average of 1.5 to 2 years. Whether members of Extinction Rebellion Youth, Sustainabiliteens, Sunrise (Youth) Movement, or school-affiliated clubs, we found little variance in terms of how individuals felt about their climate work. A thematic analysis identified the critical outcome that joining these groups had on both collective and individual meaning-making, which involved bonding, processing emotions, and taking action. We reflect on the significance of peer-led, youth-centered group settings in providing opportunities for identity development, working through emotions, and expressing political agency and climate citizenship via everyday activism. Young people want to be seen as politically competent and agentic; in many ways, they are doing that through climate organizing.

Adolescence is a crucial period in identity development, during which individuals often think about themselves, problems, and interpersonal relationships, as well as the future in new ways (Arnett and Jensen 2024; Steinberg 2020). As of middle adolescence (between the ages of 15 and 17 years), young people work on figuring out who they are and want to be, a process that is both challenging and exciting. During this time, young people are particularly agent-driven, exploring their values, motives, and hopes with others, as well as how their lives fit into the world around them (Bonnie and Backes 2019). The context within which they grow up and the opportunities provided to them shape how youth work through their identity development puzzles (Laser and Nicotera 2021). Peers and larger social groups play an increasingly important role in this period, with friendships representing a key source of support as youth shift away from the nuclear family. Given the scope of the climate crisis and young people’s worry for the future, we wondered about the significance of 13- to 18-year-olds’ participation in addressing the climate crisis.

Researchers have identified types of coping strategies as critical to young adults’ well-being and their level of environmental engagement. Meaning-making is considered to be the most effective coping strategy for climate anxiety. This approach entails “positive reappraisal (acknowledging the stressor but still being able to reverse one’s perspective), finding meaning and benefits in difficult situations, revising goals, and turning to spiritual beliefs” (Ojala 2013, p. 2193). In reframing the problem and trusting the role of other members of society to take action, young people are more likely to experience positive well-being and engage in active problem-solving. In conceptualizing meaning-making, we consider Viktor Frankl’s ([1959] 2006) landmark work, Man’s Search for Meaning, which asserted that, despite the direst circumstances, human beings face options in seeking meaning and increasing a sense of purpose in their lives. He identified three avenues of meaning-making: “(1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering” (p. 156). In his conceptualization, meaning comes from how people make sense of their reality, which includes an action that is of significance, encountering others, and attitude. Studies concur that action is central; a focus on climate change literacy and mere facts has left young people feeling powerless (Lawson et al. 2019). Emphasizing individual behavior change, instilling scientific information, and depoliticizing problem-based narratives have resulted in young people feeling overwhelmed, distressed, eco-paralyzed, helpless, and disempowered (Boström et al. 2018). Meanwhile, taking action empowers youth, providing for a meaningful role and sense of agency (Sanson et al. 2019).

Youth-led climate strikes have, in particular, demonstrated young people’s ability to create and promote a collective narrative that problematizes climate change from a rights- and justice-oriented perspective (Han and Ahn 2020). A study on the reasons for participation in climate strikes amongst young people in Norway found that motivation came from the recognition of the shared responsibility for addressing climate change. Thus, young people’s activist identification and group efficacy mediated the feeling of collective guilt (Haugestad et al. 2021). The study indicated that “participants pointed to a sense of community and shared identity that facilitated their understanding of protesting as their only effective tool for change” (Haugestad et al. 2021, p. 3). More generally, young people feel motivated to participate in activism-based youth programs as part of social justice work, providing for sanctuary and intergenerational relationship-building with peers and older adults (Akiva et al. 2017). With climate organizing, young people feel motivated to act both for themselves and for those not yet born, that is, for generativity. The search for meaning is, therefore, embedded within the desire to make a difference in the world for others. The encountering aspect of meaning-making within climate work involves believing other people can take action (also referred to as social trust) and valuing collective action (Hayward 2021). Indeed, agency needs to be rethought “not as an individual possession but rather as a highly networked and distributed potential which can be assembled and reassembled in different ways and take collective forms” (Spyrou 2020, p. 5). Agency is complex; it involves resistance and deliberation, as well as being able to imagine possible positive outcomes and speak out with new ideas.

Climate activism is increasingly understood as an expression of young people’s positive ecocitizenship (Hayward 2021). Ecocitizenship goes beyond just citizenship to encapsulate ecological awareness and environmental responsibility into civic engagement and political participation. Instead of just the traditional notion that children and young people are citizens in training, Hayward (2021) asserts that youth can be genuine present-day ecocitizens. Young people need to be seen as politically agentic, and their perspectives need to be prioritized, given that the climate crisis will affect them more than older generations (Bowman 2019; Walker 2017). While certain forms of young people’s engagement in climate organizing reflect a form of non-citizenship founded on fear and frustration among youth, positive citizenship can be expressed in small everyday changes in behaviors and actions. Increasing attention is being paid to young people’s everyday activism, where they integrate both formal and informal activities and practices, representing a form of political agency.

As contended by Firinci Orman (2022), everyday environmental activism is a relational and embodied form of political agency that entails “changing, adapting or disrupting one’s own and others’ everyday practices in individual and/or collective ways” (p. 497). This everyday activism, often referred to as little-p, is informal and often discounted but nonetheless significant and important to study (Bowman 2019). This behind-the-scenes activism, while outside of the spotlight, “plays out in meaningful ways on both micro- and macro-levels” (Trott 2021, p. 305). For instance, research by Parsons et al. (2024) with youth in New Zealand shows that environmental citizenship takes on various forms, with connections being central. In these spaces, youth feel a sense of belonging, whereby sharing and acting are key components. Similarly, a study with 18- to 29-year-olds in climate action groups in New Zealand found that “hope was generated by the prospect of sharing the burden and collectively creating action to draw attention to climate change” (Nairn 2019, p. 477). Relatedly, deliberation processes in these groups enable dialogue around the possibilities of a different world, as “a space for expansive imagining” (Olsen et al. 2024, p. 23).

The present study explores how young people perceive their participation in youth-led climate groups. Our focus on 13- to 18-year-olds is important, given the limited previous research on the role of these spaces for this specific age group in climate activism.

2. Materials and Methods

Our study used individual semi-structured interviews as the main source of data. We used a purposeful sampling method to recruit participants via word of mouth, Internet searches, and a social media call for “teen climate activists” over two months. The selection criteria for the groups included that they focused on climate in their activities and organizing, were largely or entirely run by young people under the age of 18, could communicate via email and videoconferencing, and were able to participate in interviews in English. Having been conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic (winter of 2021 through spring of 2022), interviews took place online via Zoom videoconferencing software (Version 5.8.3). Following the ethical protocol of Concordia University for human research participants under 18 years of age, both the participants and their parents or guardians were required to return signed consent forms via email before the interviews. We recognize that requiring parental consent disregards young people’s agency, but this is part of the current guidelines of the ethics review board in the province. Interviewees were given 18 USD in appreciation of their time via electronic money transfer. Some participants declined this money, in which case we donated 18 USD to The Nature Conservancy. Open-ended questions centered on group functioning, communication, intergenerational influence, understanding of impact, and views on activism. The interviews lasted between 29 and 95 min, with an average of 40 min in length. The transcriptions were shared with the participants for validation, with most of them responding, and one-third suggesting minor edits or making comments. The transcripts were coded using a reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006, 2022; Saldaña 2016), in consideration with the research focus. The reflexive practice involved seeking coherence and fit through a deep, critical, and prolonged engagement with the data. The first author took the lead on coding half of the transcripts firstly by hand and reviewing with the second author to generate the coding tree, and then using the HyperRESEARCH software (Version 4.5.4) to fully recode and categorize all data.

The participants (N = 30) belonged to four groups: Sustainabiliteens (n = 4; hereinafter ST), a Vancouver-based group; Extinction Rebellion Youth (n = 8; hereinafter XRY), local groups from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina; Sunrise Youth Movement (n = 6; hereinafter SYM), hubs from Massachusetts and California; and school-affiliated climate clubs (n = 12). See

Table 1. Participants’ group affiliations and locations.

Name of Organization	Location	No. of Interviewees
Extinction Rebellion Youth, umbrella group (XRY) United States	Boston, Massachusetts	4
	New York, New York	1
	Charlotte, North Carolina	1
	XRY National Team	2
	Total XRY	8
Sunrise (Youth) Movement, umbrella group (SYM) United States	Cambridge, Massachusetts	1
	Boston, Massachusetts	1
	Ipswich, Massachusetts	1
	Los Angeles, California	3
	Total SYM	6
Sustainabiliteens (ST) Canadian	Metro-Vancouver, British Columbia	4
	Total ST	4
School-affiliated clubs United States	Andover, Massachusetts, private school	3
	Boston, Massachusetts, public school	2
	Chicago, Illinois, private school	1
	Portland, Maine, private school	2
	Sharon, Massachusetts, public school	4
	Total School-Based	12

for detailed information about the groups’ locations. The groups ranged in radicality and engagement in political systems, with XRY privileging civil disobedience and public-facing protests and being the most radical of all four. ST was somewhat similar to XRY, yet they did not favor actions that could lead to arrest, as they focused more on intersectionality compared to other groups and did not want to risk endangering Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) members. ST was willing to work both within and outside of the political system, favoring what they saw as having the most probability of positive local change. SYM was the most politically involved, with an emphasis on the Green New Deal (GND) legislation in the United States, as well as on local and state-level governmental bodies in the states in which they were situated. School groups were the least radical and had the most centralized leadership, given their association with educational institutions; however, some school groups engaged in political lobbying, especially those related to private schools. Some groups were also part of a larger statewide umbrella organization but focused on youth-led political lobbying.

The majority of the participants resided in the United States (n = 26), and a handful were in Canada (n = 4). The average length of time belonging to the groups was 1.5 years (see

Table 2. Length of participation in group.

Time Span	No. of Participants
1 month to 6 months	3
7 months to almost 1 year	2
1 year to 1.5 years	5
1 year and 7 months to 2 years	9
2 years and 1 month to 2.5 years	8
2 years and 7 months to 3 years	3

). The mean age of the participants was 16.25 years. The majority identified as female (n = 22), with 5 male and 3 non-binary-identifying participants. There was some variation in ethnicity, with almost half (n = 14) self-identifying as mixed-Asian or South Asian, some identifying as Latinx or African-American, and nearly half identifying as white.

Author Positionality

This study draws on the doctoral research of the first author, who, as a young person herself, engaged in multiple forms of activism throughout her young adulthood. She engaged in animal rights activism and ran a vegan club in high school. She also worked at a vegetarian, student-run, social-justice-oriented, cooperative, and co-founded a plant-based club, as well as worked on fossil fuel divestment campaigns during her undergraduate years. Additionally, she has participated in events organized by Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise Movement more recently. The first author is 30 years old and identifies as able-bodied, Jewish, Caucasian, queer, and female. The second author has been an academic researcher engaged in collaborative research centering on youth participation for the last 3 decades. She completed her doctoral work on middle adolescents’ environmental agency. The second author identifies as Caucasian and a mother of two young adults.

3. Results

In understanding how young people perceive their participation in climate organizing, we found meaning-making to be an overarchingly prominent theme. Most participants (n = 27) felt their involvement in these groups gave their lives a greater purpose, regardless of the outcomes of their actions and regardless of the radicality or politicalness of their groups. More specifically, meaning came from (a) belonging to their group, (b) processing emotions, and (c) doing small actions. While presented in distinct sections, the themes are interconnected and combined, demonstrating the process of collective meaning-making that takes place in youth-led climate groups and how that represents a form of ecocitizenship and political agency for young people in North America, the context in which this study took place.

3.1. Groups as Cultivating Community and Connection

The group was foundational in young people’s participation in climate work—it enhanced their experiences of civic engagement and political involvement. In particular, the participants elaborated most on the connections established among peers and individual relationships with fellow group members. One-third of the young people involved (n = 10) spoke about the sense of community with other group members that emerged from the connections made and collaborative work undertaken. Ethan (17, XRY) reflected, “It does feel like there’s kind of a community, kind of a camaraderie… a shared culture.” Elaina (14, SYM) shared that, within her group, there is “a huge emphasis… on building a community, to make sure that… you [are] friends.” Many individuals explained how, given common passions, they cultivated friendships easily within their groups. Zelda (15, ST) remarked, “It’s fulfilling to be able to have a group of people who have those same values and the same beliefs and the same passions that you do”. Being in a similar age bracket as well as having the same environmental and political interests and passions also made it easy for young people to relate to one another.

Bonding among group members was both integral to group cohesion and a source of comfort. Makayla (17, school group) described the following: “It definitely gives the feeling of community and just being able to work together and actively doing something to help the world feels really good and feels really necessary”. Similarly, Kamala (16, SYM) explained, “With the bonds and friendships that I’ve made through this, even using humor, or fun ways to cope with [climate change] while doing our best to make the biggest impact we can make, is very comforting”. Relatedly, Caroline (16, school group) appreciated the lightness; she felt: “You can be silly, and you can say something totally off topic”. Having fun with one another bolstered interpersonal connections among group members, a foundation for collectively cultivating meaning around a difficult issue, as well as for meeting the group’s goals for actions.

Several participants referred to how this form of communal sharing was particularly important at this stage of their lives. Melanie (17, SYM) explained:

It can feel really confusing and complicating when you’re a young person just trying to live your life, and have fun, and work hard, and you see what’s happening in politics today, and how your future is being threatened in a sense. And, I think that those spaces in which people could simply just express their thoughts about the current moment, I learned a lot from listening to other people, that we share a lot in common, that you are not alone.

Realizing that their peers shared their strong emotions reduced feelings of loneliness. Connecting at a group level helped individuals make sense of issues that, when alone, appeared overwhelming. Processing feelings together provided a space for expressing one’s emotions and feeling heard. June (17, XRY) explained: “We’ve always stressed healing. So, not just working together, but forming and building relationships, and making sure that… the organizing we do is as restorative as possible”. Voicing emotions in a place where they felt safe helped these young people work through the intense feelings the climate crisis evoked for them. Jessica (17, ST), a group leader, commented, “I try [to create] just a calm environment, because, you know, we’re battling something that’s extremely mentally taxing. It’s really important to make people feel welcomed and secure and connected to each other”.

Part of the group process also involved allowing for discussion and working through disagreements. Caroline shared that, as a leader, she often had to tell her group, “I don’t wanna put all the work on myself… I need your support”. Regarding decision-making, Ethan reflected, “I think it’s good for there to be a bit of conflict, even, for some disagreement”, showing that not everyone was always on the same page. June similarly stated that, “communication is definitely one of the biggest things we’ve struggled with internally.” Meanwhile, Jessica shared that, “because we’re dealing with such difficult topics that haven’t been navigated before, there’s a lot of disagreement over how certain situations should be handled”.

Some young people mentioned that larger groups were not always inclusive of the diversity of experiences. Commenting on being part of a historically marginalized community while being involved in a youth climate organization, Annie (16, ST) shared:

We ha[d] a BIPOC caucus… [where] I really felt listened to… It was mostly just a discussion space, and I was able to connect with a lot of people in that space, and we could share our experiences, and [I] always felt very listened to, just because we had shared lived experiences, especially when it comes to climate spaces, which oftentimes is very white and ignores the struggles of BIPOC within it, and intersectionality.

Zelda, also part of this subgroup, discussed holding conversations she identified as necessary with members:

We need to embody it ourselves, too. So, when I’m able to feel that community, that joy, that hope, with my community, my fellow organizers, I feel like that’s when I’m most successful in my endeavors towards social justice or climate justice.

Zelda, therefore, called for greater diversity to enable coherence and to strengthen the sense of community within the group. In summary, the groups in which these young people engaged in climate organizing provided a space to cultivate interpersonal relationships and for healthy deliberation to help deal with the awareness that the cause they are fighting for is much greater than these youth as individuals. The group was both comforting and constructive for participants in terms of working through emotions and actions, as discussed further below.

3.2. Processing Mixed Emotions

Throughout interviews, young people shared the range of emotions that the climate crisis evoked for them and how their work was both motivated by and a response to these feelings. Half of the participants (n = 15) reported doing advocacy work to assuage the negative feelings associated with knowledge of the climate crisis. For example, one participant, Carly (13, XRY), described going through a series of negative emotions and how these culminated in the motivation to act. Carly shared: “First, [my climate grief] turns [my] anger into a driving force to do something powerful, and it turns [the feelings] into action …. So, it’s like a sadness, grief, action, change, kind of spiral”. The use of the term spiral indicates how young people work through different stages of emotions via their climate work.

Young people’s comments suggest that positive emotions emerged in part from processing negative ones with group members. It appeared that grief and sadness were sometimes eco-paralyzing but, combined with anger, could provoke action. Similarly, Lucy (17, XRY) stated, “I think if I didn’t do anything, I would feel less optimistic about the idea that we could change the direction that humanity is heading in climate change-wise”. Others also talked about how their negative emotions about the climate crisis led them to act. Amelia (16, school group) explained, “Something I talk about a lot is turning fear into determination and then turning passion into action. So, instead of being afraid of something, turn that into the reason why you want to fight”. Hope was critical in quelling climate-related sadness, grief, despair, and anger. Two-thirds of the participants (n = 20) considered hope to be a catalyst for beginning as well as for maintaining stamina in climate organizing. Having faith in the possibilities of positive outcomes was key. Annie explained hope’s centrality:

You need to have hope to meaningfully participate in the work and spread messages that aren’t just doom-ism. We try to keep sight of that, though sometimes it gets a little hard to, but it’s definitely one of the most essential things to being a successful, healthy activist.

Reiterating the importance of hope, Stella (15, school group) smiled and stated: “Not to be too poetic, but I feel like the main reason that there’s so many of us that go to the main meetings is because we wanna keep fighting, and we have hope that what we’re doing can make a difference”. Elaina explained, “Hope is just so pertinent… [it’s] synonymous with activism. You’ve got to have hope that things will change.” Hope spurred action as well as made these young people feel better. Similarly, Lucy shared, “The fact that I’m involved with the fight against climate change makes it easier to see a future where climate change is actually cared about and talked about more”. Organizing and being part of the fight for positive change quelled overwhelming feelings of grief and despair surrounding the climate crisis.

A key source of hope was being part of the group. Jessica used a metaphor referencing Star Wars to illustrate the significance of coming together with and for hope:

When I’m organizing, I feel like I’m part of the rebel alliance fighting against Emperor Palpatine, which is like the evil corporate companies, and stuff. But it’s true! I feel like banding together as a group of youth, and having that hope, having that passion, seeing these good things happen… Hope is everything, basically.

In “banding together”, participating young people felt an increased ability to overcome negative emotions. About one-fourth of the participants (n = 8) reiterated that hope was, however, not easy to nurture. For instance, many individuals felt disappointment and frustration, given the often anticlimactic or outright negative reactions to their calls for action. Annie specified the following:

Hope is the biggest thing you need when you’re organizing, but it’s also the hardest feeling… It can be extremely discouraging, but I find hope in a lot of the relationships that I’ve found from organizing.

In this sense, hope was best sought collectively, with interactions with fellow youth organizers being generative of more hope, creating a positive, reinforcing feedback loop, and increasing faith in their collective work. Next, we examine the role of action, particularly as it increased the felt sense of purpose and meaning for participating young people.

3.3. Action as Meaningful

Also prominent was the significance given to taking action and the learning gained from their civic involvement and experiences of ecocitizenship in the form of climate organizing. While their actions may have had limited impact on addressing the climate crisis overall, the individuals involved valued the contributions they were making both for their well-being and more broadly for their peers and their groups. Kamala (16, SYM) explained that “even if it’s a small change, I think eventually it leads up to be bigger. Like, a small ripple [can] work to make change on a national level.” For many of these youth, the focus was largely on the potential of what could happen as a result of their actions, even if, on their own, the outcomes may have been relatively negligible on a large scale. Makayla (17, school group) reflected on how “just those small victories in organizing… fe[lt] so huge [in] taking these doable steps towards that [larger] goal”, illustrating the satisfaction that came from taking action regardless of knowing exactly the external impact. Melanie recognized the following:

There’s a limit to what we can do. And then you’re like, you can’t influence the situation anymore. And you sort of have to accept it, at least temporarily, and the best thing to do is reach out to other people, and just try to feel content with being able to empathize with other people and feel supported.

While working hard, involved young people felt acutely aware of their limited power in bringing about global change in the way they wanted to see it. Carly spoke about the need to be realistic as follows: “Ideally, we want to reach politicians, and we have seen a little bit of that, but not as much as we hoped”. Meira (17, SYM) discussed the learning acquired from participating in this form of active citizenship as follows:

What climate activism showed me is that politics and government isn’t something that’s far away, or something to be fearful of, but rather something that you can participate in way more actively than just voting, that you can actually influence your elected leaders, and pressure them to listen to the issues that you care about.

Further, discussing political work in the same group as Meira, Makayla emphasized: “We’ve had lobby week after lobby week to get legislation passed, the majority of which fails, doesn’t make it through the house, doesn’t make it through the senate, or has been vetoed, or it just doesn’t go through”.

There is a realism in their discourse that makes them feel content and not completely dejected, as Melanie expressed as follows:

But that, even the small work that I do, it has impact, it has meaning. And it’s important for me to understand the value of what I do because I can’t do everything, because, like, I’m in high school. I shouldn’t have to do everything. I have so many more things to worry about. But it has been freeing for me to understand that what I’ve done is enough and that I cannot solve this problem, because, otherwise, you run this spiral of being constantly anxious and depressed, because this is such a terrible situation. If I were the one in power, I would do things differently. But, you have to learn to live as a young person, you have to learn to live as though you’re in high school, because if you don’t do that, like, are you living?

Melanie emphasized her ideas about participating civically and being an active and politically informed citizen, without having to take over the mental burden of their actions not always having the political and environmental outcomes they desire. She continued talking about her lobbying and climate action work with Sunrise: “It’s not my fault. I didn’t cause us to be in this problem. I learned a lot about using different systems and learned about how you persuade by talking to people”. Being pragmatic while active within the scope of what is possible in terms of their organizing work was liberating for the majority of participants.

Other youth identified the benefits of this civic engagement as an investment for their futures. Felix (17, school group) reflected: “Some of the work that we do isn’t gonna help stop climate change overnight, but it is gonna help us build an arsenal of skills and mindsets and value systems that are gonna be helpful later”. Additionally, actions, regardless of their scope and impact, helped keep morale up among participants within their groups. Some individuals even shared how depressing it was for them to dwell on dire climate-related information without acting. Marissa (17, school group) explained: “Doing something is always better than doing nothing, even if it’s just telling people that they’re better off using metal forks”. Engagement in smaller actions felt significant for these young people in taking on their responsibilities as members of a society that is in crisis. Caroline remarked that she has gone from thinking “I’m gonna make sure the whole world doesn’t burn down” to “I’m gonna make sure my friends understand this and why this is important”. Being realistic, Caroline continued:

It’s meaningful just [be]cause you know it’s important and you know you’re doing your part. I think that’s the most satisfying thing. I can’t say it’s my fault fully. You can’t say it’s anyone’s fault [specifically], but I know I did my part.

The way participants understood their work informed the meaning-making process. Amelia identified her stage of life as part of framing how she made sense of her civic participation and experience of ecocitizenship:

It gives a lot of meaning to my day-to-day activities and to my life. Often, I wonder, “What would I do with my time if I wasn’t an activist?” I feel like it’s given me a lot of purpose, in a way. People say, “You’re fighting against something so huge. You’ll never be able to do anything.” But, I think developmentally and structurally, for me, it’s been a great way to hone in on my passions and give that sort of focus to my time and my days, while also kind of quelling that eco-anxiety by doing something.

Individuals rationalized their impact, being realistic in its scope and their level of responsibility. Melanie, for instance, emphasized:

Activism is what keeps me sane, it gives me hope. If I didn’t, if I wasn’t involved in some of these spaces, then I don’t think I would be as happy as I am today…. I’m a young person, and I’m concerned about this, but there’s only so much that I can do. I want to live my life…. Besides, I do as much as I can, but there are so many other things that are important to me. I don’t simply call myself an activist, like, I’m a human being.

Melanie recognized that the impacts of youth-led climate and political activism were limited, but that her involvement was necessary for her and was a source of joy and well-being in her life. Comparing activism to being a “human being” evokes a normalization of activism as part of everyday life.

Relatedly, Zelda stated: “This isn’t just something we do for leisure because we’re so good or selfless. It’s survival work”. Similarly, when asked about the impact that being involved in climate activism had on her life overall, Lucy emphasized: “I think it’s really affected my development as a citizen of the world living in the climate change crisis”, demonstrating how these young people are becoming ecocitizens through this climate-oriented volunteer work. Thus, climate organizing has become part of how many young people experience citizenship today, both in North America and globally.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

The present study has shed light on the importance of the behind-the-scenes work of young people in local U.S. and Canada-based climate organizing and the impacts it has on the lives of participants. Young people’s participation over the long term (on average 1.5 years) in youth-led climate-oriented groups demonstrates how young people enact, seek, and experience ecocitizenship and civic engagement, further shattering the view that young people are victims, disinterested in climate change, and apolitical.

The young people involved in the present study referred to their climate work as coming out of necessity, rather than as a choice they made. Most participants normalized climate engagement, defining it as becoming part of growing up in today’s world and a major way in which they cultivate meaning in life. In a world characterized by climate change, participation in these groups is part of young people’s identity development. These youth-only or youth-focused settings provide a sense of belonging as young people listen to each other, share a larger purpose, and work for a common cause that is both comforting and generative. Significantly, our research indicates a form of political engagement of young people that is both non-formal and informal, echoing others who refer to the complexity and hybridity of young people’s political agency, which often leads to ecocitizenship (e.g., Bowman 2019; Firinci Orman 2022; Hayward 2021; Pickard et al. 2020). Young people’s involvement in climate organizing groups is also shaping their political identity, as half the participants in the present study (n = 15) evocatively referred to the likelihood of engaging in climate organizing or some form of political engagement and civic involvement for the rest of their lives.

The participants in the present study feel wary of being called activists, opting instead for a less spectacle-focused term, such as organizer, advocate, or group member. Herein, the group is a motivator and driver of their engagement in climate organizing. Camaraderie, mutual support, leadership development, fun, and relationships provided within the group context allowed young people to tackle the environmental crisis in constructive and meaningful ways. Trusting relationships with fellow group members generated a reinforcing feedback of hope for the individuals involved. Being able to share and create community amongst like-minded peers was central to these youths’ climate work, similar to research with older youth (aged 19–29) in climate action groups in New Zealand (Nairn 2019).

Engagement in these groups helped the young people involved at an individual level to learn about themselves, about others, and about the systems they are embedded in, as well as to take action(s) to address the climate crisis. The group itself enabled this cultivation of meaning, which was central for processing emotions and coming up with and carrying out actions that provided an increased sense of purpose and political agency. Of significance is that these groups were and are led by young people, providing the freedom to explore, relate, and experiment on their terms.

The relatively recent growth of youth-led climate groups may be because young people feel adults have little legitimacy and experience that merits their leadership on this matter, and that young people seek to express their ecocitizenship through social and political agency on a matter that significantly impacts their lives. This active ecocitizenship is part of them expressing their responsibility to safeguard the natural environment for both current and future generations (Heggen et al. 2019). This finding is consistent with researchers such as Bowman (2019), Firinci Orman (2022), Parsons et al. (2024), and Tattersall et al. (2022), who call for paying attention to young people’s everyday climate activism as a form of political agency, which may appear to be at a small scale but is overall significant (Trott 2021).

In applying the three avenues of meaning-making that Frankl ([1959] 2006) identified—attitude, encounter, and action—we learn about the important role of the group as a context to safely share both negative and positive emotions but also to enable activist work in ways that were both comforting and fruitful. Our research suggests that youth voices need to be center stage to appropriately support young people between the ages of 13 and 18 growing ecocitizenship and that youth’s political engagement involves combining and intersecting approaches to civic participation. Educators must not only promote climate change education in schools but also in after-school programs that support relationship-building, emotional sharing, discussion, and action (Chawla 2020; Coffey et al. 2021). These youth-oriented spaces can both support young people’s identity development and promote their development as ecocitizens.

Moving forward, it will be important to pay greater attention to who participates in these groups and who does not. In the present study, for instance, three-quarters of the participants identified as female (n = 22). While this finding is consistent with other research that shows female leadership within climate activism (Parsons et al. 2024), we question the reasons and implications for this gender imbalance.

Young people may lack the power or sway to bring about policy changes (Han and Ahn 2020), but the present study shows how they constructively and generatively seek, find, and contribute meaning. The collectives they were part of provided them with a comforting space to both grapple with their emotions and to find purpose in their actions. Hope emerged from collectively sharing their deeply felt emotions of anger, fear, and grief, resulting in an active spiral of hope, which generated action and, in turn, regenerated hope. Supporting young people in exercising active ecocitizenship, therefore, involves paying as much attention to doing as to being.

At a time when the existential crisis of being a young person in the present day is deeply felt, actively supporting young people’s engagement in youth-led climate groups can help quell eco-anxiety and increase agency. Thus, reflecting on how Jessica referred to being part of the “rebel alliance” in Star Wars, the groups in which these young people enact climate activism help them in finding both community as well as a sense of purpose in their lives through being part of something larger than themselves.

Significant for research and practice is to recognize the capacity of young people to critically question and engage with the systems that caused the climate change crisis, but also the ways that they choose to try to combat them. Additionally, we urge adults to legitimize young people’s climate advocacy and political abilities and to stop belittling youth’s perspectives on matters that inherently affect our collective future.