Power Shift workshop and the UN climate negotiations session in Bonn

Doing inspirational presentations with Wake-Up Call in the past year and a half I have been sharing a personal dream of bringing a Power Shift to Sweden. Now it seems like it’s going to happen. Last weekend I arrived to Bonn with a fabulous group of Swedish youth organisers from Stockholm, Lund, Uppsala and Gothenburg (some of them quite involved with Wake-Up Call in those places – a fact highlighted by our new beautiful T-shirts), on the picture below:

Swedish participants of the Power Shift training workshop in Bonn
Participants and trainers of the Power Shift training workshop (left to right): Andy, Johan, Oleg, Adam, Mervi, Johanna, Henrik, Alex

The workshop with our friends from the UKYCC was very inspiring and empowering. The representatives of our local teams around Sweden are now stoked more than ever to contribute to the organising process to have a fantastic Power Shift event in October. Now the task is to bring the rest of the organising team together and give them the same inspirational and capacity-building experience as the one we just got here in Bonn. Which is exactly what we have in mind for this weekend in Lund, where our British friends will do their magic once again – something they’ve been doing all around Europe for the past five weeks. So if you’re interested in joining the Power Shift Sweden team, please come to Lund on June 18–19th and we promise you a truly energising and empowering time together.

Starting this week our crew went to explore different aspects of the climate work here in Bonn:

Oleg has been working as part of the 350.org staff team, sitting at the 350.org/UKYCC booth (informally known as the “Youth Booth”) in the exhibition area inside the negotiations venue, talking to the delegates about the need to raise ambitions (limiting the global warming by maximum 1.5˚C and linking this limit to the 350 ppm stabilisation target) and keep the Kyoto Protocol alive and working in the next commitment period after 2012.

Adam went on to hang out with the international youth delegation (known as YOUNGO) in Bonn, actively participating in morning actions, going to informal meetings with the negotiations facilitators, interviewing inspiring young climate advocates and networking like crazy, to come up with new ideas for synergies between the Swedish and the international youth initiatives and projects.

Meanwhile Mervi was happy to join the Climate Justice seminar with our good friends and partners from the Young Friends of the Earth Europe – an event that brought together over 30 young climate and social justice activists from all over Europe to build capacity of our growing movement and to push the negotiations in the right direction, by joining forces with the rest of the YOUNGO in Bonn.

All in all, we’ve been quite active these past four days and tomorrow our journey continues to Berlin, where we will attend a workshop with the organisers and partners of the ‘Young Ideas for Europe’ project – something that we have been happy to facilitate in Sweden in 2009–2011 and are looking forward to continue doing so in the near future, possibly in Finland too. We will keep you updated on our journeys and adventures. And hope to see you in Lund this weekend! 😉

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