Whether those improvements affect one person at their university, 10 people in their local community, 100 people nationally or 1000 people internationally, young people really are making a difference. And that has really inspired me to get the youth voice heard more; we should be a force for change in our country, in the decisions that affect us as people in the process of inheriting our society and our planet.
Now this isn’t going to turn into just another ramble about how awesome young people are, there is a point so bear with me.
As I write I am on a train back from Geneva having spent the week at the 3rd World Climate Conference. Organised by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO, a branch of the UN), the conference was basically designed to create a framework by which people around the world, from farmers to healthcare professionals, can have better access to information about the climate. Whether the person is a farmer who needs to know if and when the rains will come, or a healthcare professional who needs to know if it’s going to become wetter, increasing the risk from malaria, or a disaster response unit needing to know the scale of an imminent natural disaster, people all over the world currently have little access to vital information and, in addition to this, much of this information just isn’t being collected due to a lack of money.
So, what was I doing there? The WMO asked the British Council to find six young people to attend the conference to give the youth perspective. I was lucky enough to be the person selected to attend from Europe so, without much of a clue about what was expected of me beyond attending one particular working group, I turned up after my nine hour train journey from Brighton a little bedraggled but fascinated to find out what was going to happen. After a couple of days getting to know the other young people (from Kuwait, Colombia, Canada and Ethiopia - the sixth participant from the Maldives unfortunately couldn’t make it due to visa issues), as well as getting to know Geneva, we turned up at the Geneva International Conference Centre bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
I won’t bore you with the details of what the UN rambled on about for the first three days (the ‘expert segment’) but, needless to say, there were a lot of international experts getting together to talk about everything from natural resources to health and from energy to transport and tourism, and about how there is a serious lack of climate information.
Four of us were given the opportunity to participate in working groups – something I think all of us found a little scary – after all, it’s not everyday you are stuck on a panel with high-level people from the likes of the World Health Organisation.
Sadly, this is as far as the youth participation went and, even then, most of us were stuck at the end of the session agenda by which time we were usually running 10 minutes over the end of the allotted time and we hadn’t even got to audience questions. Whilst I had kind of expected it, I had hoped that the invitation extended to the world’s youth was more than a box-ticking exercise. It seems that in this case the young people had been someone’s ‘nice idea’, and as much as the panel or the audience took us seriously, the WMO put up every barrier possible to us having a serious role in the events of WCC-3.
Don’t get me wrong, the trip wasn’t a waste of my time, or the British Council’s money. Not only did I get the opportunity to get to know four fantastic young people, each of them with their own inspiring projects and stories - we were all selected to become British Council Global Changemakers based on our background in campaigning and community action - but we created our own opportunities to get the youth voice heard. Undeterred by the barriers put up by the WMO, the five of us created a ‘Youth Declaration’ which we released to the media and conference attendees at the same time as the high-level segment (policy makers and heads-of-state) released theirs. Whilst we were refused permission to present our declaration to the high-level segment (us mere experts and participants weren’t even allowed into the room), I am proud to say that I think we had a real impact. We had a great response from both the media and the participants and even, dare I say it, some of the organizers.
So what have I learnt? What tangible lesson did I get out of this? I guess in that rather long and garbled story the lesson is that the world’s youth needs to stand up and make ourselves heard a bit more. It’s a painfully corny lesson I know. But experiencing such symbolic youth inclusion in such a setting has really brought home to me the fact that even when given a hollow opportunity, it is our responsibility to make of it what we can. Whether it is using the opportunity as a springboard into the media, or a chance to network with people you wouldn’t otherwise be able to meet, or whether it’s just to get your voice through to that one person in your university, we need to be more aware of the chances we get.
As one of the most important demographics for politicians, and as people who are already making a real difference to society, young people can and should be a force for positive political, social, environmental, and indeed any change.
by Ellie Hopkins
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