Inaam Chattha

Toronto, ON, Canada

Addressing the rising mental health impacts of climate change.

Inaam won for his amazing ability to tackle eco-anxiety amongst his peers. He is creating safe spaces for youth to come together and share common concerns and find healing.

Inaam Chatta, 2025 Brower Youth Award Winner

More About Inaam

As a teenager living in rural Alberta, Inaam Chattha watched wildfires inch closer to his home each year, listened to evacuees share their grief at his family’s dinner table, and silently carried eco-anxiety without realizing that’s what it was. Over the years, Chattha found ways to translate his anxiety into action by volunteering with local environmental nonprofits, leading local tree planting events, garbage, and beach cleanups, and using poetry and performance as a form of activism. He also began organizing events that explored how race, land, and grief intersect.

In 2023, Chattha launched Green Mind with a simple goal: to ensure that no young person, especially those from rural or underrepresented communities, feels as unsupported as he once did. Since then, the project has grown into a national, youth-led initiative that co-creates culturally grounded educational materials to help youth cope with climate anxiety while empowering them to take action. Green Mind’s Climate Wellness Toolkit, a bilingual resource, is now used in classrooms and summer camps in Ontario to help youth understand and regulate their eco-anxiety through somatic grounding, journaling, and peer connection. Green Mind’s team currently includes more than 30 youth from over 15 communities in Ontario, each bringing lived experience, cultural knowledge, and a shared belief that climate care must include emotional care.

Chattha, now a medical student, has also authored two children’s books — Tory the Tornado and Lila and the Cloud of Change — which are being used in schools to help children navigate eco-emotions through storytelling. Last year he was named one of Canada’s Top 25 Under 25 Environmentalists by Starfish Canada.