The Earth, Healing & Climate

March 2026

This month felt different. We gathered under the theme of the Earth — its healing, its crises, and our place within it. Sacred seasons sat side by side: Bahá’í Ayyam I Há, Ramadan, Women’s Month, and Earth Month. All of it together created something that felt quietly significant — a reminder that care for each other and care for the world are not separate things.

About This Gathering

The Apartment Café is a women-centric community space designed to feel warm, familiar, and welcoming — just like being invited into someone’s living room. Each month, we set up a shared table with baked goods and drinks contributed by the women attending. Everyone brings something small — whether homemade or picked up along the way — and together we create a relaxed, café-style atmosphere. We pour coffee, make a plate, settle in, and talk.

Theme

This month we explored our relationship to the earth — not as a distant environmental concern, but as something close, inherited, and alive in our everyday choices. We asked: what does it mean to live with the earth, not just on it? What do our own cultures and traditions already know about this? And how do we carry that knowledge forward?

Guest

Our conversation was anchored by Alexia Leclercq, a globally recognised voice on environmental justice, climate policy, political ecology, traditional ecological knowledge, liberatory education, and youth activism. She has spoken at the United Nations, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Earth Justice, Harvard University, Princeton University, and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum — reaching over 100,000 people. She was named Forbes 30 Under 30.

What moved the room was not just her breadth of knowledge, but how she holds it — with urgency, with warmth, and with a deep conviction that the knowledge already living in our communities is not a footnote to the climate conversation, but its foundation.

Details

Discussion Summary

This month’s conversation with Alexia was nothing short of illuminating. Attendees left feeling deeply inspired , a sentiment that echoed throughout the room long after our session came to a close.

As I do with all my guests, I invited Alexia to introduce herself without the weight of titles or credentials. Her answer was one I won’t soon forget. She described herself as someone connected to the land — her life, she said, is nature’s own manifestation: the strength of mountains, the flow of rivers, the gentle breeze alive in every form of the natural world.

From there, our conversation took us through the breadth of her work and activism, the vital information she believes every general audience deserves to hear, the fellowships she and her team have built, and the craft and insight behind effective campaign-making. As always, what we covered only scratches the surface of what was shared in the room.

There is, of course, so much more — and as is my intention, I leave the rest to your curiosity. Come, attend, and discover it for yourself.

Take-Home Message

This month’s take-home: Go back to your culture. Look at how your people have traditionally lived with the earth, not as an academic exercise, but as a genuinely curious one. What did they know about the soil, the seasons, the water, the animals? What practices were they keeping that we may have set down? Research it. Ask the elders. Find the thread.

The earth does not need us to invent new relationships with it from scratch. It needs us to remember the ones we already had.

From the Booklet

This month ran two initiatives alongside the gathering — acts of care that extended the table beyond the room.

Initiative 01 · Ayyam I Há & Ramadan Care Package Initiative

Windsor Convalescent Home

Ayyam I Há is a Bahá’í season of joy, charity, and service — a time to bring cheer to others ahead of the fasting month. As Ramadan approached, we turned this spirit toward the people who care for our elders every single day.

We opened donations to our community for care packages for the nurses and workers at Windsor Convalescent Home. We raised $1,400 — enough to pack individual gift bags filled with snacks and essentials, include a cash token for every staff member, and bring essential goods to the centre.

We also wrote letters. Because sometimes the most meaningful gift is simply knowing you are seen.

“The work you do is not only essential, but truly meaningful — and it does not go unnoticed. Thank you for your unwavering commitment, kindness, and heart.” — From our letter to the Windsor team

Initiative 02 · Singapore Red Cross

We set our table for Gaza.

For our second initiative, we turned the Apartment Café table itself into the fundraiser. Every baked good brought, every drink poured — the proceeds went directly to the Singapore Red Cross to support humanitarian aid in Gaza. Together, we raised $5,600 SGD — and the Apartment Café booth was the first to sell out among all the booths that day.

The table has always been a place of giving. This month, we simply extended that giving a little further.

Photos