In May 2022 the Danish youth council started a campaign to collect cloths which could be upcycled or recycled. The campaign was aimed at students at several high schools in Copenhagen. It was agreed with the schools that they would dedicate a place for the students to hand in their cloths which could then be picked up and collected by someone from ActJust.  

At Roskilde Festival the youth council hosted two drop-in events where the purpose was to encourage the festival guests to upcycle and recycle their cloths instead of buying new. At the event all the guests were invited to find a piece of cloths from the collection and decorate it with statements (stamps) about the climate.  

The two events were a huge success and almost 500 festival guests dropped by. Most of all the event gave the youth council the possibility to inform about the climate change and how it effects in an inequal way. The youth council had up until the event made research on the fashion industry and how it affects the climate. This research was shared with the festival guest as they dropped by. 

The Greek Core youth team is consisted of 12 active young people who become a group and started working together in the youth led initiatives. Most of the young people participated in the online trainings and AAH supported the group with different mentoring sessions, climate experts, study visits and group work to prepare and design the action youth led initiatives. The group designed a campaign to raise awareness on climate change and climate justice. The campaign included the following actions: 

1. Dolmadakia Project. The group invited young people to ActionAid’s Youth Centre in an alternative cooking workshop. The group cooked together with other young people the traditional Greek recipe “dolmadakia” which was a fun way to engage young people and invite them to the youth center. At the same time, the group designed a treasure hunt in the youth center connected with the SDGs. The participants had the chance to meet each other in an informal environment, learn more about climate change and SDGs and raise their motivation to support the campaign.
2. Seedbombs Project. The group visited a gardening center outside Thessaloniki and participated in a workshop related to sustainable food and agriculture. During the workshop the participants had the chance to create their own seedbombs and share them with other people and a bigger audience during the “Buskers Festival”.
3. Buskers Festival. During June 2022, ActionAid Hellas organised a big festival with the title “Buskers Festival” in the city of Thessaloniki. This festival was about climate justice awareness and ActJust participants supported it with a flashmob dance and a social theatre play. At the same time, the youth team informed the audience on climate justice by sharing the seedbombs and raising awareness about the project.
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5. Recycled paper workshop. The youth team organized another workshop in which the participants had the chance to learn ways to recycle old papers from books, A4 sheets or newspapers adding seeds as well.
6. A podcast for climate justice has been implemented by young people with the support of the Alter Thess group.

The Italian action-led initiative consisted of an online social media campaign to raise awareness on climate justice and on its interconnections with social justice, gender justice, migration and global south solidarity. The campaign has been carried on throughout June 2022 on the GlobalPlatformItaly’s Instagram and Facebook accounts. A final event of the campaign was also organized on the occasion of ActionAid Italy’s Activists Assembly in Bologna, where the youth core team involved in the project interviewed people on the streets and asked them about climate change and climate justice. A video with all the interviews was then edited and published on the GlobalPlatform YouTube account. The aim of the video is to raise awareness about people’s knowledge of these themes. You can see it here!

On Friday 17 June, a face-to-face activity was held, which consisted of a meeting to reflect and debate on climate justice and, specifically, on desertification and drought on the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.  

Isabel Iparraguirre, Coordinator of Ecological Transition, and Innovation at Alianza por la Solidaridad, participated online. As an expert on the subject, the meeting began with her intervention, in which she explained the concepts of desertification and drought linked to global aridity indices, temperature and rainfall variations in Europe for the year 2100 and the map of aridity in Spain, as well as the risk of desertification in Spain. The work of Alianza por la Solidaridad in terms of Climate Justice was also shared with the group.  

Subsequently, a debate was promoted in which we highlighted the young people’s opinion of the importance of the exhibition to inform themselves about a subject of which they had little knowledge, both terms and of the major problems facing the world in terms of desertification and drought. This activity was an opportunity to inform us about the risks to the planet and about activities that contribute to both worsening and improving them.  

The young people also had the opportunity to exchange views, interests and concerns regarding climate change, climate justice, drought, and desertification. At the end of the day, young people shared the conclusions they had drawn from the talk and discussion, with a positive outcome towards mobilisation and increased contextual awareness.

The aim of the initiative to raise awareness upon the young people on climate change and climate justice topics. The initiative consisted of several activities: 

1. Presentation of the climate justice concept
2. Workshop ‘’Utopian city: climate friendly and socially just’’
3. Movie screening ‘’30/70’’
4. Discussion and reflection

Until now we implemented 2 activities: 1 in Antakalnis gymnasium and second in Open Youth space ‘1^st Flat’’. In both activities we had 25 participants.

The Austrian ActJust team decided to implement different action-led initiatives. As a first step, everybody submitted ideas and then the whole group voted for the actions to be carried out. The core group decided upon the following action-led initiatives: 

1. Chalk street action: Linz, Graz
2. Geo-caching: Kufstein, Wels, Vienna
3. Events at service clubs: tbc
4. Theatre action: Graz

It has to be highlighted that the initiatives were youth-led and bottom-up, i.e. Südwind did not provide the idea and invited youth to participate but ActJust activists had to be proactive and cooperate among themselves. This meant a lot of support work from Südwind’s side and more time needed for the initiatives but at the same time an extremely high level of motivation and engagement from the participants.  

Chalk street action 

On 02 July 2022, the ActJust activists draw with street chalk different provocative climate messages in the city centres of Linz and Graz, two of the biggest towns in Austria. The intention was to catch the attention of passers-by to raise awareness about the climate crisis and call for more climate justice. Statements included among others:  

• “We cannot destroy the earth, we only exterminate ourselves.”
• “2,400,000 children had to leave their homes in 2021 because of environmental disasters.”
• “The earth is like a popsicle. Too hot and it’s gone.”
• “Did you know that dangerous diseases and poisons lurk beneath the melting ice?”

It has been decided to choose the city centres of Linz and Graz because it was a sunny Saturday morning and many passers-by were guaranteed. 

In Linz the action took place at the main square which is surrounded by many cafes and people. 

In Graz the action took place along the route of the pride parade which was on 02 July and where many pride parade visitors would read the statements. 

Geo-caching 

Three regional groups of ActJust activists have developed geo-caches in the area of Kufstein, Wels and Vienna. Geo-caching is a great tool for climate sensitisation because they are educational, fun and collaborative. They can be used to reach people outside the climate-bubble and are a great tool to connect people with environment and nature. Therefore, the activists have decided to have the geo-cache close to a nice lake outside Kufstein, where old and young spend their leisure time during the whole year. The second one is close to a popular watchtower in Upper Austria – another popular place for excursions, and the third one is in Vienna in a neighbourhood which declared itself as climate friendly neighbourhood (called “Klima-Grätzl Mei Meidling”) and which is implementing many activities to promote climate justice. 

Events at service clubs 

Service clubs such as Lions, Rotary and others are voluntary non-profit charity organisations. Most of their members are powerful people such as mayors, business men etc. who have actually means to change something. In Austria, NGOs, advocacy organisations or climate activists usually don’t target these service clubs even though they are a perfect audience for having big impact. Therefore, the ActJust activists have planned to make presentations on climate justice at the meetings of these service clubs. 

Theater action 

Three ActJust activists from Styria are planning a theatre play on climate justice in spring 2023. More details about this initiative will be shared at a later stage.

The Serbian youth team is consisted of 10 active young people who become a group and started working together in the youth led initiatives. Most of the young people participated in the online trainings. Youth mentor supported the group with mentoring sessions and group work to prepare and design the action youth led initiatives. 

At first, our youth team prepare material and videos for movie with youth mentor and educator. They create and promotive material to share it with citizen. Youth team designed a campaign to raise awareness on climate change and climate justice and promote movie at all educations. All educations were leaded by our youth core team.  

The campaign included the following actions:  

1. The activity was the promotion of the project outdoors, where we distributed promotional material on the main promenade in Niš and invited all those interested to attend our debate, which we later held in the premises of the Office for Youth. Along the way, we briefly presented the project to everyone who was interested and explained our goals. A large number of young people became interested.
2. The activity was education at “Mija Stanimirovic” electrotechnical school in Nis, where we presented young people with global and local problems, the impact of modern technologies on the environment, etc. They were also shown a film that briefly talks about the problems that exist.
3. First online youth mobility – We was presented our plans, movie and planned and organized activities to other youth from partner’s countries.
4. The activity was an open debate in the premises of the Youth Office of city of Nis, where our film was presented to young people, and after that we all commented on whether there are additional problems and what solutions could be applied to prevent or reduce the problems that currently exist.
5. The activity was education at the faculty “The academy of technical-vocational professional studies” where we presented the students with a presentation related to caring for the environment and then showed them our film. Many young people commented and gave suggestions for solving the existing problem.
6. The activity was education at the “Bora Stankovic” high school in Vranje, where the material “Climate change and other negative impacts that lead to it” was presented to young people. High school students presented additional problems that are present in their surroundings and environment, and we consulted each other on how best to solve the problems. A film was also presented to them.
7. The activity was education at the “Institute for the education of youth” in Nis, where the planned education of migrants, of whom there were about 10 in the Institute, and young people who come from a lower social class or are a national minority or have a criminal record. Unfortunately, a few days before the training, most of the migrants moved on, so only one migrant and a couple of vulnerable young people (poor, with a crime file, etc.) attended the training. The education was also attended by their teachers. The title of theeducation was “Climate change and the impact of migration on climate change”. A film was also presented.