After attending several global climate conferences and hearing panel after panel discuss the power of storytelling, we noticed the same gap persist. The urgency to transform climate narratives wasn’t reflected in the mainstream messaging shaping public perception.

The stories that break through and the voices telling them are too often disconnected from the communities living through the reality of climate change. There’s an empty, deafening space that needs filling.

Climate Mic Drop was born from a desire and drive to fill that space. The three of us (Melissa Jun Rowley, Mitzy Bautista, and Yasmine El Baggari) have come together to flip the script — to collaborate with storytellers, strategists, artists, Indigenous leaders, youth activists, journalists, and funders, so that the climate movement can begin moving away from simply talking about the power of narrative and implementing tools to rewrite it.

On September 23rd, during Climate Week NYC, we are bringing together a cross-section of voices to align on how to reframe climate, justice, and possibility for the decade ahead.

Climate Mic Drop is a starting point for collaborations, campaigns, and cultural shifts that we hope ripple far beyond a single stage, and send out a call for storytellers everywhere to pick up the mic and carry the movement forward.