This organization will fund activists of colour to do nothing but rest for four months

This summer, a group of Black, Indigenous and people of colour climate activists in Toronto will get fellowship positions to spend four months resting. That’s the entire assignment. 

Shake Up The Establishment (SUTE), a pan-Canadian, youth-led climate justice organization is launching a new fellowship program called Rest, Recovery and Resistance: BIPOC Community Organizers Fellowship Program. 

Fellows will be organizers of colour of all kinds — from those who organize protests to those who organize sustainable agriculture education. Funded by Patagonia Toronto, the fellowship programming will include hikes, communal dinners, and free counseling, but SUTE’s founder Manvi Bhalla says they’ll co-design programming with the fellows, so that each fellowship is tailored to what rest and recovery look like to its particular participant. 

As climate change-induced disasters and crises pick up speed, many of us are experiencing climate anxiety — and climate activists, of course, are particularly susceptible. Pair that with the overwhelmingly disproportionate impact climate change has on marginalized communities (and their disproportionately small share of contributions to climate change), and it becomes clear that Black, Indigenous and people of colour on the frontlines of the climate justice movement deserve a break.

Besides, Bhalla says, Afro- and Indigenous futurisms are fertile grounds for massive climate solutions — and when activists have time to rest, they have more capacity for imagination. “As someone who works in policy [advocacy] a lot, I find that we’re very reactive,” she says. “I find moments of peace, when you’re in nature, are some of the best times to realize what you want, and not just, what did the government do and how are we reacting to it?” 

Operationalizing rest 

Bhalla says the program was inspired in part by the Shake Up The Establishment’s own internal practices. SUTE is run entirely by youth and mostly by volunteers — which means the organization’s team members work other jobs, have school to worry about, and go through major life transitions all while working to solve the deeply distressing problem of climate change. 

To build the team’s resilience, Bhalla says they implemented hiatus periods throughout the year. They also have a “no questions asked” rest policy (if team members need mental health or wellness days, they take them, period). “This is going to be a long-term, sustained movement. You can exist as a human being and continue to do this work,” Bhalla says. 

But Bhalla acknowledges that most of the social purpose world — and particularly those doing frontline activism and organizing work, who often don’t have benefits, paid time off, or even any pay in the first place — does not operate that way. So she and the SUTE team started dreaming of creating a program that would allow others to “operationalize rest” like they had. 

The Healing Justice Framework

At the same time, Bhalla had begun learning about Indigenous Climate Action implementing a healing justice framework into their work. This framework, originated by Cara Page of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, acknowledges the mental and physical toll organizing and activism takes on people and seeks to make healing part of the work itself. 

Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) began using this framework after two leaders of the organization, Melina Laboucan-Massimo and Eriel Deranger, experienced major health issues and both ultimately had to step back from their work. This, according to an open letter on the organization’s website, led the ICA team to ask themselves: “In the era of climate change and vast social inequality, when everything is urgent and we often feel we must do everything in our power to push for change — what happens when your body says no?”

And not only is healing essential to activists’ longevity, the ICA team writes, it’s essential to climate justice itself: “…the culture of extraction that defines capitalism is a layer that seeps into every aspect of life — extraction on the land, akin to extraction of time, stories, knowledge, and energy — extraction as a mindset and way of being.” 

Reclaiming access to nature

There’s another reason the SUTE team felt this program was sorely needed: many people across Canada lack access to nature — and that can be particularly difficult for climate activists. 

“Recently, I was hiking a peak in Vancouver and I was sitting up there with my dog…and I was like, oh my god, this is why we do it,” Bhalla says. “That urgency has remotivated me and reenergized me in ways that I don’t think the burnout culture [allows for].” Without access to nature, she says, “you get eco-grief, because you look around you and it’s all grey and industrial, and you’re like, what’s the point? There’s nothing left.” 

That’s why Bhalla and her team decided to host the program near Toronto: the GTA is densely urban with notoriously little access to greenspace beyond city parks. “I have to take a whole day off to drive three and a half hours…to go sit on a beach,” says Bhalla — and not many people have the luxury to do that, let alone underpaid (or unpaid) climate activists. 

Funding rest 

Once the team had the idea for the fellowship program, there was just one (big) problem: funding. “There’s no way somebody’s going to give us money to rest,” Bhalla thought. “There’s no way that’s going to be funded. How are we going to make this happen anyway?” 

And they did find a way — a start, at least, through Patagonia Toronto’s Retail Grants program, which “supports environmental organizations with bold, direct action agendas and a commitment to long-term change,” according to the company’s Instagram post announcing this year’s grant recipients.

The SUTE team is looking for more funding for the program to be able to take on as many fellows as possible, and to be able to hire paid staff to organize and run the programming (with the funding they have now, they’ll need to rely on volunteers). “I think when people see grants to non-profits, they think it’s so much money, but I don’t think they realize how much extra volunteer work goes into [running programs],” says Mei-Ling Patterson, SUTE’s manager of communications and project manager for the Rest, Recovery and Resistance program.

Patagonia Toronto is granting SUTE $15,000 to run the program, largely unrestricted, Patterson says. SUTE isn’t required to report to Patagonia Toronto at all while the program is running. There are no predetermined outcomes the funder is looking for. Fellows will just be asked to keep a journal with reflections and ideas they have throughout the four months, and create some sort of media project — a podcast or a piece of visual art, for example — based on their reflections. 

In many ways, the program is a brand-new concept, both for SUTE and for funders, so fitting it into the traditional molds of impact measurement and funding structures will be a learning experience, Bhalla says. 

“We have not heard of anyone doing anything like this — somebody actually getting money for this.” 

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