Tag: climate

  • Heading to Istanbul!

    Leading a workshop on international climate politics in Vienna
    Leading a workshop on international climate politics in Vienna

    June is a pretty hot month for us at Wake-Up Call. Well, to be honest, we were actually freezing in the rains-battered and flooded Central Europe, as we travelled to Vienna to facilitate sessions on climate and energy politics and to train 30 young activists from all corners of Europe in campaign strategy planning at the EnCaTra training, organised by Federation of Young European Greens in the beautiful capital of Austria. But the energy and enthusiasm of the EnCaTra’s participants raised the emotional temperature considerably higher than what would be considered sustainable for our planet. 🙂 This warm event gave us enough energy to continue the trip to our next destination – Istanbul, where a number of our friends and comrades have already converged to join the protests in Gezi Park and to help prepare for the Global Power Shift that is coming to that city in less than two weeks from now. A slogan that we saw at one of the demonstrations that we recently took part in: “A tree fell down, a nation woke up”. We hope that similar wake-up call for democracy is coming to many corners of the world, as it already did in Tunisia and Egypt, and is currently happening all across Turkey.

    On the 7th anniversary of Al Gore’s famous documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ we are packing our bags to go to Istanbul to participate in Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Training, where we and few other of our friends from Sweden will be trained as effective climate communicators and organisers. Few days after that first training we are going to attend another one – ‘Training for Trainers’ – with the awesome facilitators from Training for Change. And then it’ll be our turn to flex our “facilitator’s muscle” and to spend a week with seventy young climate leaders from over 135 countries of the world, coaching them in story-telling techniques and the story-based campaign strategy. Among those participants will be our own colleagues from Wake-Up Call and our close friends and allies from PUSH Sverige. How exciting is that?! Very! We are so psyched up that we can barely contain ourselves! Come back to this blog and tune into Wake-Up Call’s Facebook page and Twitter account for more updates from Istanbul, from Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Training and from the Global Power Shift!

  • Something amazing is just around the corner!

    Hey hey, all friends and fans of Wake-Up Call!

    In case you haven’t heard yet:

    Something really exciting is on the horizon!

    ‘Moving Planet’ is a huge global day of action for climate this September 24, co-organized by groups like 350.org, Greenpeace, Yes Men, Oxfam, World Council of Churches and many others. On this day, all over the world, by the hundreds and thousands, people will be getting on bicycles and hitting the streets to push their communities and our politicians beyond fossil fuels. Just this morning Indonesia launched a 350 hour bike ride and New Zealand made a hilarious video about their plans to launch a rocket into space, and in just few hours our friend David Gillblom from Wake-Up Call’s local team in Gothenburg will meet 300 high school students in Vaggeryd to get them all excited about organising a ‘Moving Planet’ event in their home town. You can check it out at: http://www.moving-planet.org

    It’s just 10 days away. Will you join the fun and organise something in your place? It can be easy and fun: start with creating a new Facebook event and registering a new action on http://www.moving-planet.org/start Then let’s see how many friends you can get together for a bike ride, a roller-blade flash mob, a dance marathon, or a skateboard invasion in your town. If you need stencils, logos, T-shirts designs – we got it all covered on this page. And if you need to find more stuff, you always can use Google, right? 😉

  • We’re walking on sunshine

    Valter is happy about the Lester R. Brown's book "Plan B 4.0"
    Valter is happy about the Lester R. Brown’s book "Plan B 4.0" © IFOK, 2011. Photo: Maja Cronert

    This year Young Ideas for Europe can be called nothing less than a success story so far. Day one, two and three have passed and tomorrow is the grand finale. Like many old students, I still had a somewhat living connection to Spyken, my old gymnasium. But what I have faced in our “camp site” classroom this week has surprised me greatly. Young people, just a year or three younger than myself, have shown amazing insight, analytical skills, enthusiasm and compassion for the world that we live in. Through their own presentations and hard work, through the tools/knowledge given to them by the invited speakers Lars Almström and Thomas B. Johansson and through my fellow colleges facilitation, the “Young Ideas” participants at Spyken have done some incredible work within a very short time frame. Tomorrow they will spread light over the many issues and solutions that we have available, today and in the future. Tomorrow, we can all walk on sunshine.

    And for now, a word of inspiration and encouragement from one of our political patrons, a great role-model of an activist, a politician and a wonderful human being, Jens Holm:

  • Wake Up Call at Globsol in Finland

    Some of Swedish participants on the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki
    Some of Swedish participants on the ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki

    Friendship and cooperation between Sweden and its neighbouring country, Finland, is easily left behind in a globalizing world. This last weekend Wake Up Call went to facilitate workshops at the yearly conference called Globsol in Finland, which aims at bridging and strengthening the relations between Finnish and Swedish youth. This year’s theme of the conference was ‘international trade’. In four different workshops, out of which Wake Up Call was helping to facilitate two (one on Corporate Social Responsibility and one on Climate), the participants went through an intensive weekend with exchanged personal stories, knowledge and practical work.

    The conference was graced by some great keynote speakers and panelists, among them researches, politicians and investment bankers. They all did their very best to provide information and inspiration to the workshops’ participant and to fuel their enthusiasm.

    Wake Up Call thanks the skilful and capable organisers of the Globsol–2010 and all the wonderful participants for the intense, productive and fun weekend that we had together in Hanaholmen! We hope to see you all again soon!