Global Changemakers

Power Shift ‘09

I can’t speak for young people around the world, but I’m confident that I speak for those in the UK when I say that youth disempowerment is a huge problem these days. Its not that young people are unaware of the key issues facing the world today, but that they feel that as a young person, their voice won’t be listened to. So a vicious cycle forms of young people not getting active, their voices don’t get heard, so no-one recognizes the youth constituency in society.

At the same time, the climate change movement is facing a truly global problem. As someone who comes from an international development background my interests lie in human security, that is, poverty, health, education etc. Yet it is clear that climate change will make all of the problems that I went to university to study so much worse. From food security to HIV, and from conflict to poverty alleviation, climate change prevents any chance at global equity any time soon.

The problem with the climate movement is that we have a bit of a time issue: there is none. Yet climate change is all about our generation and the future we will inherit. The negotiations taking place next week will be deciding on carbon reduction targets to be made by 2050. This sounds like a really long way off, but this isn’t my great great grandchildren we’re talking about – I’ll be 62 years old. So young people have a double challenge – to get their voices heard in the first place, and then to get their demand for a fair, ambitious and binding agreement across to those who have the power.

So where does my CAP come in? Well some of you may have heard of the youth climate coalition movement, or indeed of the Power Shift events that are happening around the world. This year has already seen Power Shifts in the USA, Australia and Canada and more are planned elsewhere. The UK Power Shift was organized by the UK Youth Climate Coalition (ukycc.org) and was designed to bring young people from all over the UK, from seasoned climate activists to those who have never had anything to do with campaigning before, to give them new and innovative campaigning and communications skills. Using regional scholarships, crashpad communal accommodation and lots of really really exciting young speakers, we taught 350 people the secrets of Obama’s speeches, the basics of climate science, the importance of the UNFCCC negotiations and, most importantly, what young people can do to tackle climate change.

I could spend hours talking about the intricate planning that went into the programme so that each participant went through an emotional journey through the weekend, or the major problems we had raising the £30,000 to put on the event, or the health and safety nightmare that was the flash dance on the Monday. But instead I want to concentrate on the successes. But even this I feel I shouldn’t talk about – I’m biased.

To see the feedback from participants, click here and here.

See the amazing press coverage here (and check out the tag line!).

And finally, for the official video of our fantastic flash dance, click here (or watch the embedded version below):

I feel like my CAP summary is a bit heavy on the philosophy and not on the practicalities, so should anyone want a copy of the preliminary report which outlines how we went about organising Power Shift, the problems we faced and our plans for the future, please let me know – ellie@ukycc.org.  

Ukycc.org

Powershift09.co.uk

Gotvision.ukycc.org