Dear Tomorrow

Nellie A.V. Chaban, managing director, believes in the revolutionary power of storytelling, art-making, and place-based community engagement to create real, positive change in the climate movement.

With DearTomorrow, Nellie applies 15 years of leadership in the cultural sector as a program director, fundraiser, educator, and partnership builder to expand our transformative impact and global reach. Nellie is a passionate advocate for a livable climate and is thrilled to collaborate with the DearTomorrow team to empower communities around the world to respond to the climate crisis. Nellie holds a certification in Civic Ecology from Cornell University, and an  MS.Ed. in General & Special Education from Brooklyn College.

Jill Kubit, co-founder, is a social entrepreneur and climate communicator working to build and scale creative engagement strategies in the US and around the globe. Jill has co-founded multiple projects including DearTomorrow (2015), the Our Kids’ Climate global network (2019), the global Climate-Parent Fellowship (2020), and helped establish the labor-environmental field (2005-2014).

Jill is a leading voice in climate-arts and storytelling, cultural and narrative strategies, climate communications, and movement building. Her award winning storytelling and creative work has been covered by leading media, and showcased in publications across the globe. She has a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Bachelor of Arts from Northwestern University.

Sandra Freij, curation and production exhibit design, is a Swedish photographer and filmmaker with a background in the fashion and advertising industry. Throughout her 20-year career she has created work for exhibitions, editorials, and campaigns worldwide. For the last four years, Sandra’s work has been focusing on advocating for positive change, campaigning and spreading awareness of the climate crisis through creativity and storytelling.

She is one of the founding members of growing UK grassroots movement Parents For Future UK and in January 2022, Sandra joined the DearTomorrow team as a curator. She holds a B.A. from the University for Creative Arts in the UK and also an M.A. from the School of Photography and film in Gothenburg, in her native Sweden.

Article: 

“The Effects of Climate Action Interventions along Cultural Individualism- Collectivism”

Using the global study that compared 11 different climate interventions across almost 60,000 participants in 63 countries, the letter to future generations (adapted from the DearTomorrow concept) increased support for pro-environmental behavior, participants’ belief in climate change, and willingness to share information about climate change in both collectivistic (e.g. India, Brazil, Mexico) and individualistic countries (e.g. Japan, UK). While the study found that some interventions worked better in either individualist or collectivist countries, the results found that the Letter to Future Generations intervention was effective across both. Thus, this evidence suggests that across distinct cultures in the world, the letter to future generations is an effective method of increasing key climate outcomes.

Article:

“Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries”

A modified version of the DearTomorrow letter-writing activity, called the ‘Letter to Future Generations’, was submitted into a major global study comparing 11 different behavioral interventions for climate action. The study spanned 63 countries and 59,440 participants. Of all the interventions tested in this study, the Letter to Future Generations writing activity had the largest positive impact on participants’ support for climate policy, increasing support across almost every country included in the study. It ranked 2nd in increasing people’s willingness to share climate information with others and 4th at increasing participants’ belief in climate change.

Article:

“Responsibility to future generations: A strategy for combatting climate change across political divides”

Intergenerationally-framed interventions for climate action are potentially effective because they are not politicized in people’s eyes. This investigation offered extensive support for this argument across different countries, methodologies, and studies. Importantly, for individuals across the political spectrum, intergenerational concerns predicted climate action engagement and pro-climate attitudes. From all the possible interventions targeting climate action that use an intergenerational-frame, the DearTomorrow concept performed the best across several indicators.

 

Article: 

“The differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries”

Using the dataset of the global study comparing 11 different cultural interventions, this study reviewed 51,224 participants from 60 countries and analyzed the data across the political divide. In this study, three of the interventions (emphasizing collective actions, the letter to future generations, and letter to future self) worked across both the political left and right. This evidence suggests that the letter for future generations (adapted from DearTomorrow) is one of the most effective methods for increasing key climate outcomes across the political spectrum.  

 

Article: 

“A letter to future generations:Examining the effectiveness of an intergenerational framing intervention”

This study explored the possible benefits of having people write letters either about climate change or to future generations. People who either wrote a climate essay or letter to their child reported feeling a greater responsibility to do something about climate change and stronger intentions to act pro-environmentally. When comparing the two methods, only those that wrote a letter to their child in the future felt an increased legacy motivation and chose to have more of their study bonus donated to a pro-environmental charity. This study concludes that the intergenerational framing method is effective in making climate impacts more salient in the short term.

 

Article:

“The salience of future impacts and willingness to pay for climate change mitigation: an experiment in intergenerational framing”

This study attempts to find a way to bridge the gap between people’s choices and their perception of the climate consequences of those choices. Participants were asked to either write a letter to the future or a climate change essay, both of which increased their willingness to donate to climate change mitigation efforts more than those that did not write about climate change. For people writing to their children or grandchildren, writing the letter increased the concerns around the impacts of climate change. Regardless of people’s pre-existing climate change concern, the letter-writing task impact was relatively equally effective. This may suggest that individuals creating their personal climate story with their own views, beliefs and frameworks can eliminate some of the commonly seen partisan responses to climate.