Youth activism and the climate crisis

Youth activists across the world are leading climate actions and calling for an equitable and just response to the climate crisis. Yet their demands and proposals are still being overlooked in exclusive decision-making spaces such as COP, the annual UN climate conference.

What would the world look like if we could shift the power so that young people took over? What can youth leadership offer the world? Driven by a sense of crisis and fed up with government inaction, youth engaged in climate activism in Africa and the Pacific Islands joined host Purity Kagwiria in October 2022 to discuss how they see shifting power dynamics; the importance of representation and intersectionality in the climate movement; and strategies they use to maintain hope.

Listen to this 38-minute audio summary of the conversation’s highlights.

In December 2022, within the annual campaign 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence (GBV), we continued the conversation with youth activists and directed our attention to their fight for gender equality and safety. Listen to the audio summary.

About the speakers

Nada Elbohi is currently the Resource Mobilization and Partnerships Officer at Rights and Access of Women to Safe Abortion in the Middle East and North Africa (RAWSA MENA). She also co-leads Network of Empathy, an online platform with the aim of practicing and promoting emotional skills as tools for solving global and local challenges, and is developing a digital youth-led project on sexual and reproductive health information.

Yolanda Joab Mori previously led the first climate change education program in schools and communities across Micronesia, bringing climate change education to over 10,000 young students and over 3,000 community members. Yolanda founded Island PRIDE Micronesia, a grassroots non-profit dedicated to empowering communities by uplifting the most marginalized to take action, particularly women and girls. 

Joy Munthali is the founder and executive director of Green Girls Platform, a female-led initiative that works to address the violence that girls and women face due to climate change in Malawi. Green Girls Platform is also the co-founder of We Trust You(th), a global initiative that was set up to challenge and support youth-focused donors and NGOs to partner and fund young people more intentionally and equitably.

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