Tyjana Connolly
… is strengthening connections between the Black community and the climate movement through fellowships and cultural work.
“I grew up in rural Alberta, rural Saskatchewan, and Calgary. I grew up around the oil field, and around farmers, and so that has a lot to do with how I see the world” says Tyjana Connolly, co-founder of Black Eco Bloom. “So the first thing I wanted to do when I got into the environmental sector was talk about Just Transition. I was thinking about the people I grew up around: how are they going to cope with these changes? I think livelihoods is a huge, key component of environmental work.”
These days, Black Eco Bloom is working in partnership with the City of Calgary on a Climate Adaptation Fellowship, targeted at young Black women studying environmental issues at the university level, and providing hands-on training around urban climate adaptation issues. Next, with support from a professional mentor, the fellows will work with communities to develop a local climate adaptation project. The fellowship process will also include networking in the environmental sector, to build professional connections and understand the roles and jobs available to them when they graduate. The goal: to bring more Black women into climate and environmental work, and support their career trajectory in the process.
Another key project of Black Eco Bloom is Roots of Wisdom, a research project that looks into ways that sustainability knowledge has been preserved through Black and Caribbean diaspora communities in Canada. The project involves conversations around peoples’ sustainability practices at home, and how these relate to cultural teachings preserved through the diaspora. “I think because of the way that environmentalism in Canada is framed, a lot of people are not interested in engaging,” says Connolly. “Putting it through this diasporic lens brings it home to us, rather than the other way around.”
Black Eco Bloom’s emphasis on mentorship, community-building and cultural preservation come from Connolly’s own introduction to environmental work, when Naolo Charles and Ingrid Waldron fundraised to send her and other Black youth to the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) in Glasgow in 2021. There, and at COPs since, Connolly has built strong community with other racialized and Indigenous youth in the climate movement, and sees a need for more of that kind of “coalition building and collective building” in Canada.
Right now, Black Eco Bloom is a small climate organization that is punching above the weight of its underfunding, relying on an active Board, project-level contracts, and Connolly and her co-founder Leila Cantave putting in hundreds of hours of free labour. With sustained operational funding, this is an organization with the potential to deepen the bench of Black climate leadership in Alberta and Canada, and strengthen the climate movement in the process.
This interview was conducted in Spring 2025.
On how cities benefit by democratizing climate and urban planning:
“In Calgary, the Black Community is on the periphery of the city, but it's also on the periphery of resource and access. So not being able to understand or actively partake in urban planning, it just furthers that peripheralization because our experiences are not being brought in. And there's wisdom here that the white environmental movement is not catching on to, right?
It's about world making, about being able to craft communities and worlds in your own image. Every community has a knowledge and a history and an experience, but it's often only one community whose knowledge and experience is presented in the physical infrastructure. By taking up space in climate and urban planning, you are able to shape your space in a way that’s relevant to you, relevant to what you need, and it starts to dismantle those systemic inequalities.”
Photo: Black Eco Bloom Planting Seeds to Bloom community consultation with the City of Calgary, on city planning and environmental equity (Tyjana in the center of the photo, Tyson from 02 consulting to the left and an event participant to the right)
Photo: Black Eco Bloom at Blackfest fundraising by selling t-shirts and stickers (incl. Emelia, board member and Seyi, volunteer)
On how a lack of core funding holds their work back:
“When we have a project that needs paid staff, we typically will fundraise enough to cover the salaries for a contract period. Which has worked, but also has not worked. So I'm on the Board, and I act as Executive Director. That also means that I'm managing employees, and also not a full-time employee myself. That has been a barrier. We can find project grants, but it's also having the capacity to see through our commitments. A paid Executive Director is probably where we need to go. But that's a large funding stream that we currently don't have.”
On the challenges of building a nonprofit from scratch:
“Starting a nonprofit, as youths, there was so much we did not know. And I found it very difficult to even find affordable legal advice, and information about the structure of a Board, and incorporating, and all of those very technical things that I guess you learn through trial and error. It would be really helpful to have those starter resources that are not always funded, because foundations don't like to fund operational things, they only like to fund project things. That's definitely been a barrier: having access to funding specifically for operations, capacity building, for legal fees, and those kinds of things.”
Photo: Black Eco Bloom at the Small Island Developing States Conference in Antigua & Barbuda (Left to Right: Emelia, Board Member, Sapphire, Founder of Caribbean Feminist and Tyjana, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Black Eco Bloom)
On when a large climate foundation told them to try a “Black” funder instead:
“I think from that point, we kind of strayed away from foundation funding. It was very early on, like the first year of BEB that we were applying for funding. It was a shock, especially because of the lack of funding for Black organizations. And it was a reality check. But we've also had a lot of good experiences since then with funders that are supporting diverse youths.”
Photo: Black Eco Bloom at COP27 in Egypt with panelist from Black Indigenous Liberation Movement (Tyjana and Leila, co-founders of Black Eco Bloom in the center)
On what we can learn about community-building in the climate movement from the U.S.:
“I am in awe of the way that they organize, they just are together in a way that I don't think we have here yet. There's food, there's music, there's color – in Canada the color is missing, even on the walls! It just seems a little bit less lively in that way. I wish that we had more opportunities to organize where we're just building community.
I went to a conference last year here in Canada – and just the stuffiness of it, the stuffiness of the venue – I'm not saying this to be negative, but there are spaces that are built in a very specific way that are not conducive to community building; we're not getting to know each other. We're all at our tables, and there's no opportunities to co-mingle and to learn. And then there's also this hierarchy that I notice in Canada. There's the big names, a hierarchy of knowledge and a hierarchy of experience, if that makes sense.
I think climate justice is care work, and care work comes from being in community. And so having those opportunities to just build community without needing to take something away is important. Share your experiences, share the work you're doing. And let's connect.”
Photo: Tyjana speaking on a panel at the Canadian Pavilion at COP27 in Egypt, the panel was on youth activism and environmental justice.