Caring for Nature as a Spiritual Duty

In Recife, Brazil, Rayana Burgos dos Santos is mobilizing Afro-Brazilian terreiro communities to defend nature as sacred and to claim their place in climate justice. Through the Rede de Terreiros pelo Meio Ambiente, created in 2023, she strengthens climate education, advocacy, and a living network of Black women, youth, and faith leaders. Sixteen women across northern and northeastern Brazil are documenting environmental memories as testimony and strategy, while the network’s COP30 communications reached over one million views. Rayana calls faith a “powerful social technology,” shaping values and collective imagination. Her work shows that ancestral spirituality, storytelling, and policy influence can move together; quietly, firmly, and far, for community climate futures.

One Family: From Soil to Soul

In Eswatini, Sharon Fraizer shows how climate action begins with soil, seeds, and compassion practiced daily. As a volunteer with the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, she helps lead a community farming and feeding program spanning 40 communities, two farms, and a nursery. The work supports 20 schools, engages more than 1,000 young people, and equips over 1,000 women to grow food and strengthen household resilience. A community-built nursery produced 53,000 seedlings in four months, spreading backyard gardens and hope. Through hospital partnerships and handmade support items, care becomes a network. Sharon’s faith teaches interconnectedness, healing land, and people together. In her words, turning palms, downward means becoming givers.

Caring for Creation as a Way of Life

Mandisa Darkie Gumada turns creation care into a way of life. Rooted in worship, lived in daily choices, and shared across generations. Based in Durban and connected to Green Anglicans, she trains church leaders, youth, and women to become “eco-champs,” translating scripture into practical action: reducing single-use plastic, conserving water, planting trees, and growing food. Her work moves through dioceses shaped by floods, drought, and food insecurity, always grounded in local realities. In interfaith spaces, she has learned that environmental care is a common language. Mandisa’s story invites us to see climate action as ministry, everyday, collective, and possible. Her campaigns, from Green Lent to Plastic Free July, widen reach.

Forming Guardians of Creation

In Australia, Adi Mariana Waqa brings biodiversity and faith into the classroom, forming young guardians of creation. Through the Columban Schools Partnership Programme, she translates Laudato Si’ into accessible, practical learning for primary students. By connecting global ecological realities with local action, she fosters shared responsibility across cultures and continents. Her approach invites dialogue rather than instruction, encouraging children to see environmental care as identity, not obligation. Integrating storytelling, curriculum resources, and cross-cultural exchange, Mariana plants seed of stewardship early. Her leadership demonstrates that lasting climate resilience begins not only in policy or protest, but in formation.

Rooted in Care, Even in Crisis

In Haiti, Marjory Louis-Mard lives ecological conversion as a daily commitment amid instability and loss. As a Laudato Si’ Animator, she supports gardens, youth clubs, and grassroots faith communities dedicated to caring for creation. Despite displacement, violence, and the destruction of nearly everything built, she continues rebuilding step by step. Rooted in Catholic social teaching and interfaith collaboration, her work sustains hope where structures collapse. Through children’s gardens and shared spaces of care, she nurtures resilience that survives crisis. Marjory’s story reminds us that climate action is sometimes quiet persistence, grounded in faith that chooses to continue even after everything is lost.

Growing Forests, Growing Values

Priyanka Pratap Patil restores degraded land through food forests that cultivate both nourishment and values. Guided by Hindu spirituality and the practice of inner transformation, she designs biodiverse ecosystems that regenerate soil, water, and community resilience. Through Sanjeevanam and Golden Era Eco-Services, she supports villages in restoring landscapes while strengthening nutrition, livelihoods, and youth engagement. Her forest model extends beyond agriculture into philosophy, emphasizing collaboration across faith traditions and collective growth. By linking ecological healing with spiritual grounding, Priyanka demonstrates that restoring land also restores dignity, possibility, and hope for communities navigating climate uncertainty.

From Faith to Frameworks

Shahin Ashraf MBE works at the intersection of faith, policy, and climate finance to transform how resilience is defined and funded. Through Islamic Relief Worldwide and locally led adaptation efforts in Bangladesh and beyond, she advances climate justice grounded in community voice and ethical finance. By integrating Islamic financial instruments with structural reform, she advocates for systems that prevent vulnerability rather than simply respond to crisis. Her leadership bridges global frameworks and grassroots realities, ensuring women and marginalized communities shape adaptation planning. Shahin’s work demonstrates that faith can influence governance architecture, unlocking resources and reshaping institutions toward equitable climate futures.

Faith, Trees, and Shared Prosperity

In coastal Kenya, Sister Miswale Zingizi unites faith, enterprise, and environmental stewardship to reshape local economies. Through Kaya Nut and the Mkorosho Initiative, she supports women processors and farmers while advocating for cashew tree conservation and climate-resilient agriculture. Grounded in Islamic principles of Amanah, stewardship, and trust, her leadership challenges systems that separate profit from purpose. By strengthening value chains, restoring trees, and expanding fair access, she builds prosperity that circulates within communities. Her work demonstrates that climate resilience is not only ecological but economic and moral, proving that ethical enterprise can restore dignity while protecting land for future generations.

Growing Sacred Forests, Growing Future Generations

In Punjab, Dr. Supreet Kaur leads a faith-rooted environmental movement that transforms reverence into restoration. Through EcoSikh and the Guru Nanak Sacred Forest initiative, she has helped plant thousands of dense native forests that regenerate ecosystems, cool urban landscapes, and strengthen livelihoods. Yet her work extends beyond measurable impact. By framing nature as sacred, she shifts behavior, embedding stewardship within worship, households, and community leadership. Engaging women, youth, and faith institutions across regions, Supreet cultivates ecological awareness as both service and responsibility. Her story reveals how spiritual conviction can shape practical solutions, nurturing resilient communities while growing future generations of environmental guardians.

Loving the Earth by Caring for People

In Sierra Leone, Margaret Bassie demonstrates that climate action begins with care. Working across urban settlements and rural provinces, she supports flood mitigation, sanitation transformation, agricultural resilience, and long-term community recovery. Rooted in interfaith collaboration and grounded leadership, her work moves beyond emergency response into sustained commitment. Whether cleaning drainage systems, supporting women farmers, or remaining present long after other organizations depart, Margaret embodies climate justice through persistence. Her approach strengthens relationships between people and place, proving that environmental protection is inseparable from dignity, trust, and shared responsibility. In caring for communities, she teaches that caring for the Earth becomes a lived faith practice.

Protecting Mother Earth as an Act of Faith

In Indonesia, Sister Hening Parlan mobilises Muslim women and interfaith communities to confront deforestation, coal extraction, and climate injustice. Through initiatives such as Eco-Bhinneka Muhammadiyah and Green Ability, she connects Islamic teaching with environmental protection and collective responsibility. Guided by the belief that harming the Earth is like harming one’s mother, she transforms repentance into restoration. Her work demonstrates how faith-based organising can shift narratives, empower women, and build alliances that protect land, livelihoods, and future generations.

Restoring Harmony with Nature

Sister Jayanti Kirpalani integrates spiritual consciousness with technological innovation to advance climate leadership in India. From pioneering the India One Solar Thermal Power Project to promoting Sustainable Yogic Agriculture, she links renewable energy, food systems, and inner transformation. For Sister Jayanti, sustainability is not only technical progress but moral alignment with nature. Her work demonstrates how faith traditions can generate large-scale environmental solutions while nurturing individual awareness, interfaith cooperation, and long-term commitment to harmony between people and planet.

When Climate Meets Opportunity

In Njoro, Kenya, Lenah Mwangi transforms agriculture into a bridge between climate resilience, youth empowerment, and economic dignity. Through Inuka Agri Solutions, she works with around one thousand farmers and mentors emerging young professionals in climate-smart agriculture and employability skills. Her approach links land restoration with opportunity, ensuring that sustainability strengthens livelihoods rather than limiting them. Grounded in integrity and faith, Lenah demonstrates that climate action is not a single-sector effort but a system connecting food, education, trust, and community leadership.

Climate Action in the Small Things

In New Addington, South London, Annette Wicks demonstrates that climate action often begins in ordinary routines. Leading a volunteer-run Salvation Army food bank serving around thirty families weekly, she integrates sustainability into procurement, refill systems, and food choices while protecting dignity. Rooted in faith and shaped by decades of service, including time in Zambia, Annette shows that environmental care does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like thoughtful decisions, reduced waste, and consistent compassion practiced week after week.

Falling in Love with the Earth Again

In the woodlands of the Forest of Dean, Vivienne Prescott reimagines climate action through relationship rather than rhetoric. As a Salvation Army officer, she tends a three-acre smallholding where women, families, and children reconnect with soil, dignity, and spiritual belonging. For Vivienne, environmental care begins with love—sitting on the land, growing food together, and rediscovering wonder. Her ministry shows that ecological restoration and poverty justice are inseparable, and that faith lived outdoors can transform how communities experience land, hope, and responsibility.

Being Co-Creators with God

For Irene Sebastian-Waweru, faith and environmental stewardship have always been deeply intertwined. As part of Climate YES, a youth-led ecumenical movement spanning multiple African countries, Irene helps support young Christians responding to climate change in their own communities. Often working behind the scenes, she contributes to building structures, relationships, and long-term commitment across diverse contexts. Irene’s story reminds us that faith-driven climate action is sustained not only by visible leadership but by consistent care, collaboration, and the quiet work of holding movements together.

Planting Seeds for a Just Future

When Iman Berry speaks about climate action, she begins with faith, justice, and the lived realities of community life. As the co-founder of Green Ummah, she works at the intersection of Islamic ethics, youth leadership, and environmental justice, creating spaces where climate education becomes action. From classrooms to mosques and interfaith coalitions, Iman’s work connects climate care to worship, civic engagement, and systemic change. Her story highlights how faith-rooted education can empower young people to act locally while thinking globally.

Faith as Service, Climate Action as Ministry

For Nankwanga Jida, climate action begins with faith, patience, and service. Working across rural communities in Eastern Uganda, she supports families to adapt to climate change through sustainable agriculture, food security, and community resilience. Rooted in the church but reaching far beyond it, her work brings together farmers, schools, and interfaith leaders to respond to climate impacts in practical, dignified ways. Jida’s story shows how faith, when lived as service, can restore land, strengthen communities, and nurture hope over time.

Faith in Action: Meisie's Climate Leadership

Across Southern Africa, Meisie Lerutla is mobilising thousands of women to translate faith into environmental stewardship. Through the Mothers’ Union, she nurtures Eco Champions who restore degraded land, strengthen livelihoods, and embed climate awareness within church communities. Her leadership reimagines churches not only as places of worship, but as centres of resilience and ecological responsibility. By equipping women with practical tools and shared purpose, Meisie demonstrates how collective faith can regenerate communities and protect the Earth.

Seeds of Change

In Kenya, Sister Josephine Kwenga is cultivating change through sustainable agriculture grounded in faith and community leadership. As a leader within the Union of International Superiors General (UISG), she works with women to restore degraded land, strengthen food security, and build resilient livelihoods. Her approach connects spiritual responsibility with practical farming knowledge, ensuring that care for the Earth translates into nourishment for families. Through training, mentorship, and collective action, Sister Josephine demonstrates how faith-led agriculture can regenerate soil, dignity, and hope.