Youth Empowerment – Awareness to Action About ECO-UNESCO ECO-UNESCO is Ireland’s environmental education and youth organisation. ECO-UNESCO is affiliated to the World Federation of UNESCO clubs, centres and associations (W.F.C.U.A.). ECO-UNESCO’s aims are: •
• •
•
to raise environmental awareness, understanding and knowledge of the environment among young people to promote the protection and conservation of the environment to promote the personal development of young people through practical environmental projects and activities to promote the ideals of UNESCO
ECO-UNESCO develops and runs environmental programmes for children and young people on a broad range of environmental issues through schools, youth organisations, community groups , local authorities. ECO-UNESCO’s headquarters is based in ‘the Greenhouse’, a joint initiative of ECOUNESCO and Cultivate aimed at providing quality environmental and sustainability education, training and youth programmes in Ireland.
Get Involved! See www.ecounesco.ie or contact ECO-UNESCO, The Greenhouse, 17 St Andrew Street, Dublin 2 Tel: + 353 1 6625491 Fax: + 353 1 6625493 Email: info@ecounesco.ie
Introduction Young people are increasingly aware of global challenges and have ideas about what needs to be done about global issues such as climate change or poverty. This awareness has a strong impact on young people and often creates a desire to bring about change. Frequently, however, young people feel disempowered; that they do not have a voice or a say in decision-making or in influencing policy. This Seminar and workshops programme developed and delivered by ECO-UNESCO explored how young people can feel empowered to take action together for a more sustainable world. The ACT GLOBAL seminar followed on from ECO-UNESCO’s ‘Youth for the Future’ Education for Sustainable Development conference held in September 2010. This conference had found that young people felt that while they wanted to take action on issues that were important to them they felt they didn’t really know what they could do and felt disconnected from decision making. Both the conference and seminar took place in The Greenhouse and were attended by young people, adult support workers, policy makers and experts.
The aims of ECO-UNESCO’s ACT GLOBAL seminar were to: • Explore important sustainable development issues that affect young people, as defined by young people; •
Encourage and enable young people’s participation in democratic processes around policy and practice;
•
Provide an opportunity for young people from diverse backgrounds and all over Ireland to come together and develop their environmental awareness, activism and social participation, and to share and exchange ideas with others.
This booklet has been developed as a follow on to ECO-UNESCO’s seminar ‘ACT GLOBAL: Youth Empowerment – Awareness to Action’ in March 2011 and post-seminar workshops and aims to compile the outcomes of the seminar and workshops including notes, photographs and accounts of the day in a way which can help any individual or group interested in moving from awareness to action.
Also included are concrete examples of how your group can take action with the support of ECO-UNESCO’s youth programmes in particular the ECO-UNESCO Young Environmentalist Awards and ECO-UNESCO Clubs. ECO-UNESCO provides advice, support and programmes to help young people develop their ideas in actions.
Elaine Nevin National Director ECO-UNESCO
Looking to take Action? See www.ecounesco.ie to find out how you can get involved in the E