The Missing Link: Millennial Parents and Climate Displacement

We must begin to democratize a dialogue on climate displacement. From this realization, our picture book Seeking Shanti was born.

When you lose your home, you lose everything. When folks flee, the power of choice, safety, ability to access education, economic stability, health, and stable mental health is lost. The risks for women and children far exceed the risks for men. In 2020, the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, published a paper stating that “Women displaced by disaster often face increased protection risks such as sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), exploitation and trafficking. Limited access to healthcare can also impede women’s access to life-saving health services, including reproductive and mental health services.”

IDMC data indicates that the average annual volume of new internally displaced people (IDPs) related to disasters during the last decade was almost three times the new IDPs volume related to conflict and violence.  

We will, to put it simply, all begin to be affected by climate displacement very soon. And young children around the world will likely be displaced due to climate in their lifetimes. They will likely flee their communities due to climate change. They may move internally, shifting systems that have not been created to manage what the New York Times is calling it: The Great Climate Migration.

Our team realized that millennial parents, those reading this who will be in their fifties in twenty years, need a tool to begin to talk about this new, shared reality we are already starting to encounter. Change of any kind can disrupt a child’s life, and traumatic change out of one’s control – such as a climate disaster – may overwhelmingly disrupt a child’s life. There is little literature on this. 

So we created that tool. Our writers Jesse Byrd and Sandy Kaur Gill put it nicely: by developing a dialogue on climate migration for children ages 6 – 8, written and illustrated by people of color, centering people of color, and speaking to a reality projected to disproportionately affect people of color, we hope to begin to democratize the dialogue. And, democratize it quickly. 

There are very few picture books that donate all proceeds to creating meaningful, quantifiable impact. There are even fewer books that create awareness about something of this size for millennial parents and their young children. 

Introducing ‘Seeking Shanti’ by award-winning authors and creatives Jesse Byrd and Sandy Kaur Gill, who is also an Advisory Board member. It was illustrated by Monica Paola Rodriguez with support from Advisory Board member Ramya Velury and Create Structure Founder Emma Riley.

To order your copy of Seeking Shanti, please make a donation of $40 or more to Create Structure here.