Women and Climate: Stories from the Ashes

My name is Josselyn Wolf and I am a seventeen-year-old artist/activist.

Last September, I had the privilege of attending Climate Week NYC alongside a UN organization called the Global Centre for Climate Mobility. At this conference, I was most inspired not by a president or a prime minister, but by the female founder of a nonprofit who first drew my attention to the intersection of women and the climate crisis. Despite this intersection and, in many cases, disproportionate impact, only eight out of 78 world leaders at COP29 were women. After diving into more UN reports about the inequity of representation in climate policy and the number of women susceptible to climate displacement - some UN reports claim that up to 4 out of 5 of people displaced by climate change are women - I was instantly inspired to seek the human stories.

In this short film, the proof of concept for a project I aim to one day take around the world, I intend to do just that: explore the intersection of gender, wealth inequality, and climate justice with a particular focus on the experience of women. This June, I will seed this vision with a small crew in the ash of the LA wildfires, seeking the devastation, the regrowth, and above all, the human stories. I plan to profile three-five women, among them a community organizer, a teacher, and a young climate activist.

The budget for the film will land at around $10,000. With this number in mind, I was wondering if you might be kind enough to help me reach this goal and spread the word! It is my hope to enter what we create into film festivals and eventually get bigger producers to sign on and develop it into a feature-length, so this would be the first phase of something that hopefully will only grow.

My sincere gratitude for your support of all my art/activism and commitment to change in this seemingly-inhospitable political climate. Together, I truly believe we can shift the paradigm of gender equality, climate, and change.

To the stories that inspire action… and to the people that ensure they are told,

Josselyn