In both her capacity as a professor and as the director of the nonprofit ENRICH Project (a project on the MakeWay shared platform), Dr. Ingrid Waldron has been working with Black communities on climate resilience since 2023. That work has recently taken on new visibility, thanks to funding from the McConnell Foundation and a partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital. Building Black Climate Resilience is a web portal that distills results from workshops Waldron held with Black communities in Central Toronto, Scarborough, Brampton, Mississauga, and Hamilton into both a narrative policy brief and a community resource. 

The portal, which was conceptualized by climate justice advocate Alicia Richens of Climateverse and designed by Richard Barrett of HyperGraphik Design, includes fictionalized representations of real stories gathered during the workshops, lists of what Black communities need to thrive in a changing climate, as well as materials for policymakers – all based on Waldron’s workshops with Black community members over the last four years. Those workshops included a widely diverse population – newcomers, established Canadians, those with roots in various parts of Africa and those from the Black diaspora – and identified common challenges that the website is designed to address.

Along with accessible, relatable text and graphics, the site also includes a 40-minute documentary directed by Rayne Grand and executive produced by Waldron called A Matter of Justice: Climate Change in Black Communities in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, featuring interviews with workshop participants and other community members – bringing faces to stories and concepts. For further information and to access the portal, click here.