Let’s Break the Silence!
Sustainability education is an underutilized tool for mitigating climate change.
Value-based behavioral change surrounding sustainability at the individual, communal, and societal levels is essential for an environmentally resilient future. It is our responsibility to equip the next generation with the values, mindsets, and habits that prepare them for the environmental challenges they will face in the future.
INGRAIN
FRAMEWORK
Making sustainability meaningful, tangible, and actionable for children.
A child’s worldview is influenced by adults around them and what they observe from and interact with in their environments. Accordingly, there is a need for adults and institutions who care and are able to communicate about sustainability. The Ingrain Framework is designed to help adults improve the way they communicate about climate change and sustainability with children by making sustainability meaningful, tangible, and actionable.
The framework is a tool that can be used as a guiding principle to curate or create a series of activities to help children embrace and engage in sustainable thinking and action. Curation includes leveraging existing resources, while creation consists of building up new experiences or building upon existing ones.
WHY TO CARE
Understanding why to care about sustainability makes it meaningful.
WAYS TO THINK
Understanding ways to think about sustainability makes it tangible.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
Understanding what can be done about sustainability makes it actionable.
Effective sustainability communication is…
OPTIMISTIC
Focus on optimistic, instead of anxiety-inducing messaging to build comfort and confidence, fostering a constructive and creative mindset.
ACTIVE
Help children come to their own conclusions via activities that involve exploration, iteration, and reflection, enabling them to connect to core sustainability concepts in ways most meaningful to them.
YOUTH-CENTERED
Engage children in activities that are age appropriate and culturally relevant, while leveraging their current knowledge and interests.
COMMUNITY-BASED
Integrate learning seamlessly into day-to-day life by encouraging local action, and purposefully make those actions visible to provide opportunities for individuals to connect with others.
Based on Research at MIT
Our work reviews academic research on eco-anxiety and the effectiveness of various communication pedagogies with existing solutions and their implications. In addition to secondary research, we engaged a wide range of stakeholders – including parents, educators, researchers, and children – through interviews and workshops to develop the Ingrain Framework.
“MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellows Natha (Bam) Singhasaneh and Alexander Crease aspire to empower younger generations to become better global citizens through human-centered design. Together, they are exploring how we might make learning about sustainability meaningful, tangible, and actionable for young people.”
Become a Communicator!
We’ve designed the Break the Silence Workshop to provide you with a foundational and practical understanding of the Ingrain Framework.