Youth Climate Summit

The Youth Climate Summit took place this week from 9-13 November. The Summit was instigated by our Head of Sustainability Dr Tipton in March and evolved into a collaboration between charity Global Action Plan, our London Schools Eco-Network (LSEN), launched by St Paul’s in 2019, and hundreds of teachers and organisations from across the UK. Here Alexandra, LV, a Youth Climate Summit Ambassador, tells us more:

The aim of the Summit was to unite schools and young people for a week of climate action and pledges for the planet. Each day had a specific theme, such as ‘Travel, Pollution and Waste’ and ‘Fashion and Consumption’, culminating in a live high-profile panel session with young ambassadors and representatives from schools, business and government. There were many amazing sessions across the week that people could attend, including three channels all playing live at the same time with people talking about maths for Planet Earth, what our money is doing when we are not looking, energy storage options and so much more! Youth Climate Ambassadors, including myself and Tian, VII, had pre-recorded interviews with people involved in businesses such as Marks and Spencer and Lego to ask them what their company is doing to be more ecologically friendly. This was called Careers Conversations and happened every afternoon. All the sessions were incredibly exciting, inspiring a new generation to get involved with helping the environment through the jobs they choose.

Not only are jobs like marine biologist or earth statistician helping our planet, jobs from across the board are helping behind the scenes. In school, students had the chance to watch a range of sessions in specified classrooms and on the electronic screens, and there was a Youth Climate Summit social media takeover on the school accounts. Sessions are available for anyone to watch for free via https://www.transform-our-world.org/whats-on, where you can rewind the livestreams. All past sessions are gradually being uploaded to this YouTube channel, so you can also catch up there. Teachers and businesspeople alike all contributed to this fabulous week of wonderful and intriguing sessions; it was a great success! Thank you to all those who were involved with making this happen, it was absolutely amazing!