Current Programs
- Repairing the Social Contract
Worldwide young people are increasingly distressed about climate change and the uncertain future they face. In a partnership with the Mental Health Climate Change Alliance, GTEC explored the emotional and psychological reactions of a diverse group of young people’s (16 to 24 years) to climate change along with their ideas about programs and services they would find helpful. This study was supported by Michael Smith Health Research BC.
Download a copy of the report on the study here: MHCCA Repairing the Social Contract.pdf - Climate Response Centre
Canada’s first Climate Response Centre is projected to be located on Vancouver’s Granville Island because of its iconic nature, the Island’s significance to Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and its high level of public access. The Response Centre will be a source of relevant and accessible educational and community development programming, a template for communities throughout BC and a centre of evolving community-based expertise about responding to climate change. This initial centre is designed to serve as the hub of the GTEC Community-based, Collaborative Model mentioned below.
- Building Climate Change Resilience in the Community Social Services Sector
This program entails building climate change resilience in the existing infrastructure of community-based organizations province-wide and, through these organizations, communities. This approach avoids parachuting programs into communities by leveraging the well established relationships these organizations already have with communities. To some extent, the delivery system for climate education and action is in place.
Based on a survey of their leadership, the Federation of Community Social Services of BC recognized that the impacts of climate change are a threat to their member organizations.
See their Findings and Recommendations. - GTEC Community-based, Collaborative Model
Many of the technologies necessary to achieve a net-zero society are available today and many others are under development. But large-scale systemic change only comes about when enough hearts and minds have changed. Climate change is not only an individual, technical, or environmental problem. It is a systemic challenge that requires educational solutions at the community, organizational, social, and cultural levels. The GTEC Community-based, Collaborative Model envisions educating, activating and supporting communities in two interconnected ways based on a hub and spoke model:
- Canada’s first Climate Response Centre (described above)
- The spokes entail building climate change resilience in the existing infrastructure of community-based organizations province-wide and, through these organizations, communities (described above)
See the Community Based Collaborative model for more information.
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The Reader is GTEC’s online, free access arts and culture publication focused on the climate crisis, adaptation to it and its mitigation. Now in its 5th year the Reader is attracting an increasing readership as one of BC’s premier publications about climate change. The GTEC Reader is published on a quarterly basis. Subscribers receive each issue in their email inbox. > See the current GTEC Reader – Volume 5, Issue 1 — Articles in the current issue:
- Youth, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Future
- SOLASTALGIA – The Rise of Climate Anxiety in Young People
- Shaking Up The Establishment
- Pathways: To Have Children (Or Not) in the Climate Crisis
- Repairing the Social Contract
- Two Business Ethics Students Use Video to Reflect on Ethics and the Climate Crisis
- Recent Climate Fiction – Four Brief Book Reviews
- Our Contributors
Subscribe to the GTEC Reader here >
GTEC is…
A Model for Regenerative Urban Living and Healthy Community in the Rapidly Changing World of the 21st Century
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The GTEC Board of Directors
Arden Henley
Executive Director
Terry Stone
DIRECTOR
Norman Sam
CHAIR
Todd McGowan
SECRETARY
Neal Mutadi
DIRECTOR (ON LEAVE)
Mary Charleson
DIRECTOR
Gerry Zipursky
DIRECTOR
Mary Kean
DIRECTOR
Alisa Kaletsky
DIRECTOR
Linda Thyer
VICE-CHAIR
Kim McLeod
TREASURER
Steve Conway
DIRECTOR
Sapna Dayal
DIRECTOR
Ranbir K. Banwait
DIRECTOR
Raphael Gasc
DIRECTOR