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Huluun Zhu

The impact of our bursary places

TLDR

  • Hulunn Choo is a coach based in South Africa
  • She received a bursary place on our Climate Change Coaching Mastery course in March 2024
  • She intends to use the training in her role as a coach for Environmental Activists
  • Hulunn says “We need to also heal our relationship to each other and to nature. If we don't then all we will be doing is fixing the results of the breakdown. Instead of transforming at the cause.”

 

Hulunn was born and raised in South Africa, where she lives today. Her grandparents migrated there from China, when her grandmother was pregnant with her father. Her mother is Afrikaans (a branch of German, Dutch and French). Hulunn is a team coach to the Gigatonne Challenge.

As a teenager, she was interested in psychiatry. “I knew that I was supposed to listen, share, support and give to people as my calling” she says. Instead, because she felt compelled to work on the environmental crisis, Hulunn signed up a volunteer with Greenpeace Africa,. From there, she joined the Gigatonne Challenge as a team coach. “I enjoy participating and learning, and mentoring and supporting others” she says. “It all came together for me that in order to heal the planet, we need to also heal our relationship to each other and to nature. If we don't then all we will be doing is fixing the results of the breakdown. Instead of transforming at the cause.”

Hulunn found the discipline of climate change coaching almost by accident but had an instinctive sense that it would be helpful. “I never knew I was looking for it, until it found me! And when it did, I knew that this path was the next step for me in my life's work. I heard about the course when someone in the Climate Coaching Alliance community mentioned it and when I went to your website, I just knew that I needed to do it.”

“There have been so, so many ‘aha’ moments on this course. Every module dove deep into what I learnt or worked with over the past 10 years. I especially loved when we covered Purpose.”

The Climate Change Coaches bursary programme offers two completely free places on the course to coaches who would not otherwise be able to afford the training, who are based in regions less represented by the coaching profession. We are especially keen to support coaches who will use their new skills within social and environmental projects. Emily Buchanan, Programme Director at the Climate Change Coaches, who runs this course said “Hulunn was a natural choice for the bursary. She was enthusiastic, thoughtful and told us how she would use the skills to make a real difference.”

Hulunn says “I want to help others to work through the emotions and feelings tied to doom and gloom by focusing on a reimagined vision of the world they want to live in. And in the process support others to find themselves. I want to help young people to develop these skills, and in turn transform others.”

Hulunn has also been invited to work with a social worker to create a programme on coaching and climate change for young people. She is also currently gifting climate change coaching sessions to university students. We wish her all the very best. Keep us posted, Hulunn!

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