North South Climate Dialogue is a small team building a bigger conversation — one bilingual term, one workshop, one pen-pal at a time.
QiQi is inspired by 七巧板, the traditional Chinese tangram puzzle made from seven simple shapes. Just like a tangram can be taken apart and rebuilt into endless forms, NSCD believes language can be deconstructed, translated, and reimagined across cultures. QiQi represents curiosity, playfulness, and inclusion — reminding us that climate dialogue is not one fixed shape, but something we build together through many voices, perspectives, and ways of learning.
“Deconstruct. Translate. Rebuild.”
North South Climate Dialogue (NSCD) is a youth-led bilingual climate learning platform that uses language exchange, interactive workshops, and playful translation activities to make climate conversations more accessible. We bridge English and Chinese climate knowledge by helping participants explore key terms, cultural contexts, and real-world climate stories together.
NSCD aims to foster grassroots collaboration between China and Canada through cross-cultural climate education. Climate language is shaped by who's in the room — we want more rooms, more voices, and more shared vocabulary between English and Mandarin speakers working on the same future.
These four guide everything we do. We believe in the power of dialogue in the climate sector — that the slow work of explaining a term across languages is itself climate work. Translation is collaboration. Curiosity is qualification.
We're building a way to connect youth from different backgrounds — to learn together, to translate together, and ultimately to take action together. The 149 terms in our glossary are a starting point. The community that grows around them is the real point.
Two bilingual climate learners building the kind of room they wanted to be in — where a term can be explained, questioned, and shared across languages.
An aspiring actuary and climate advocate with a background in actuarial science, Hailin is interested in how risk modelling, climate adaptation, and disaster finance can support communities on the front lines of climate change. She brings analytical thinking and a strong equity lens to NSCD — because translation is about context, belonging, and who gets to participate in climate conversations.
An energy modeler with a background in energy management, environmental engineering, climate policy, and building decarbonization, Junhua has worked on energy transition, carbon markets, greenhouse-gas accounting, and community-based climate education across China and Canada. As an immigrant and bilingual climate learner herself, she started NSCD to make climate knowledge more accessible across languages and cultures.
You can start with the vocabulary, read a workshop recap, or reach out about joining the pen-pal system.