Celeste Alcena
Celeste Alcena (she/they) is an Ontario-based facilitator and wellness practitioner with ancestral roots and lineages in the Bahamas and China (Hong Kong). They’re a passionate dreamer and dedicated earth worker, on a path to nurture creative spaces for community care, particularly for QTBIPOC youth. This inspires her work as a founding member of the Pass the Vibes collective, creating space for Black youth to connect and explore their creativity. They have been facilitating climate education & politicized healing spaces for over 5 years, igniting remembrances of traditional Indigenous, ancestral lineages and magic within the lands and waters most close to us. For them, our healing is a “love letter” to the land. Celeste is a DJ and likes to write, especially on topics of homecoming and racial, environmental justice.
Eco-Grief and Land-Based Initiative
The Eco-Grief & Land-Based Healing Initiative is a “for-us, by us” youth-led community-based intervention that supports youth in navigating eco-grief. Our mission is to transform emotional overwhelm into civic engagement by centering healing, land connection, and cultural practice as foundations for climate justice. The initiative prioritizes QTBIPOC youth facing systemic marginalization, impacting access to culturally grounded wellness and climate justice spaces. This project disrupts dominant climate engagement models within white, cis/hetero-normative, colonial contexts such as so-called Canada that merit quantitative productivity and urgency over relationality, repair, and care, contributing to youth burnout and disengagement.
About this Project
Communities Served
My project will involve and/or impact the following communities:
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
When it comes to community impact projects, the UN has created 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These are the Sustainable Development Goals associated with my project.
How the project works
Through 5 multi-city Eco-Grief Café gatherings and the Land, Love, Liberation retreat, participants engage in land-based practices, grief education, and community-building that build capacity and a continuum of care for sustained civic participation and connection to the Earth. By addressing both emotional and structural barriers, participants are equipped with tangible pathways into advocacy, organizing, and Indigenous land stewardship, strengthening youth retention, leadership, and long-term participation in climate justice movements.
Project Impact
Success indicators include participant satisfaction, qualitative testimonials, increased motivation to engage with climate justice and community leadership, and participants reporting the formation of 6-7 new peer or community connections during the initiative.
Project Mission
This project addresses a critical gap in youth climate movements: the lack of well-funded, intentional spaces that support youth from systemically marginalized communities in processing eco-grief, a key barrier to sustained engagement.
Project Team
The Eco-Grief & Land-Based Healing Initiative is led by Celeste Alcena
- Celeste Alcena
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