After hearing Dorothy Cotton speak this morning, I had the opportunity to attend a session on Youth Empowerment by Dan Flerlage, Teachers for a Sustainable Future.

Before getting started, Dan played a clip from Saturday's beaming of Jim Garrison, from the World Forum.  I was actually quite pleased to see him speak again - it was the by far the most sobering session I attended all weekend.  Jim's talk focused on the climate reduction goal of 2020 and warned that if we let that date get changed to 2050 in the Copenhagen summit, the results will be disastrous.  As Dan summarized, "the summit in Copenhagen is the next Kyoto."

Dan's session was attended by around 50 people, the majority of whom we're high school students.  We started by brainstorming a list of impedements that keep young individuals from making change.  Among the answers listed were: isolation, lack of hope, a forum, time, money, contacts, and data.

Dan accepted the impediments, but challenged the group - "Your power is far beyond what you think"  Next, we brainstormed a list of strengths that youth today have to offer.  Among the answers listed were: proficiency with technology, provide a conscious for justice, holding adults accountable, more energy, more time, and less deeply conditioned cynicism.

Dan then played another clip from YouTube (see above) which announces the October 24 Call to Climate Action.  After watching the video, we broke into workgroups to brainstorm plans that we could implement in our own schools, communities, and families to make a change over the next 6 days leading up to the 24th.

The groups came up with a variety of ideas including using social networks to spread awareness, removing plastic utensils from school lunchrooms, and calculating and sharing our own carbon footprints.  In the end, the take home message was indeed that we have the power to affect a change and that the youth of today have ample tools and energy to use them.

TAGGED WITH: copenhagen, kyoto, youth