Tag: power shift

  • En händelserik höst

    Spykens engagerade elever arbetar hårt under Wake-Up Calls workshop 'Redesign the World'
    Spykens engagerade elever arbetar hårt under Wake-Up Calls workshop ‘Redesign the World’

    Hösten är här, vilket betyder lite mer kyla och mörkret varje dag, mer också ett nytt spännande skolår och nya roliga projekt med Wake-Up Call. Det händer saker nästan varje vecka. Vi började hösten med en rivstart då vi genomförde en Klimat Kick-Off på Stockholm Regions Internationella Skola i mitten av september, där även fantastiska Lorentz Tovatt medverkade. Några veckor senare besökte vi Lund, där vi körde samma koncept på FN-gymnasieskola Spyken. Både eleverna och deras lärarna tyckte att vår föreläsning var mycket inspirerande, vilket glädjade oss oerhört mycket. Nu i helgen medverkar vi på Miljötingen i Gävle där vi kommer att träffa gymnasieelever från olika skolor i Dalarna och Gävleborg och peppa dem inför kommande Global Climate March i slutet av november.

    Vi lyckades nominera tre unga svenska delegater från gymnasieskolor i Stockholm och i Ängelholm till en stor europeisk konferens om klimatlösningar, som arrangerades i Paris av Europaparlamentet. Och snart kommer ännu större grupper svenska gymnasieelever att resa till COY11 i Paris – ett stödprojekt för skolor som Wake-Up Call har drivit i Sverige sedan i våras.

    Det blir fler resor till gymnasieskolor i Sverige och till klimatkonferenser för ungdomar utomlands (så som Power Shift Ukraina i slutet av november, till exempel) under kommande två månaderna. Det är fantastiskt att se hur starkt klimatengagemanget växer i Sverige och i hela världen!

    squad_sans_eyeOch redan nästa vecka, den 5:e november, tack vare ett mycket bra samarbete med Studiefrämjandet i Gästrikland och dess projekt Café Planet kommer en ny upplagan av vårt eget utbildningskoncept, ‘Wake-Up Squad’ av stapel i Gävle, där Wake-Up Call kommer att facilitera en aktivitetsserie med stadens ungdomar kring ämnen klimat, miljö, integration och hållbar utveckling. Det blir spännande, roligt och lärorikt!

  • 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!

  • Sweden’s first Power Shift: we wrote history last weekend!

    Sweden’s first ever Power Shift happened last weekend in Gothenburg. ‘What is Power Shift?’, you may wonder.

    Power Shift was initiated first in 2007, when 6 000 youths gathered in Washington, DC. to show the politicians that there’s a strong demand for improved environmental policies. Two years later the number of participants grew up to 12 000 that gathered outside the Capitol. Ever since the movement continued to organise demonstration that manifested its growing power. One of the most famous examples of that was a flash dance organised in front of the Sydney Opera House.

    Last weekend went down in history as the date of Sweden’s very first Power Shift. Over 130 young people gathered in Gothenburg to show how much they care for the climate and for their collective future. In the event’s programme one could find presentations, workshops and a big flashmob towards the end of the three-days conference:

    There was also a set of political demands that were highlighted during the event:

    • 100 percent renewable energy in Sweden
    • CO2-neutral Sweden before the year 2030
    • Big investments into the green infrastructure (railroads, high-speed trains, expanded bicycle lanes, climate-proof housing etc.)
    • Sustainable jobs for young people
    Power Shift Sweden, Photo © Peter Stenberg / Sveriges Radio
    Photo © Peter Stenberg / Sveriges Radio

    Wake-Up Call was listed among the organisers and so we were involved in the event’s presentations and workshops. I, for example, made a keynote speech in which I focused on inspiration and the things that motivate people to get engaged. On Saturday I gave a presentation about the situation with the UN climate negotiations.

    The entire weekend was a huge success that reached its peak with a big and media-savvy action in the city centre calling for bolder environmental policies from the Swedish government.

  • Redesign@Power Shift

    Friends!

    After the amazing Power Shift this weekend a lot of us are a bit blown away and have needed some time to grasp it all. I myself feel as exuberated and full of hope as I did this Sunday. Damn, it was a great conference!

    Adam leads workshopWithout trying to sound self-glorifying my absolute peak was when me and Charlotte facilitated the workshop ‘Redesign the World’ on Saturday with some of the most amazing young climate leaders I have ever met. The level of engagement you showed and the bright ideas you developed from just ideas to clear-cut projects is what warms me this October day. Just the fact that the projects you initiated were pitched to key partners within an hour after the worskshop tells us a lot about what key figures attended the conference. The fact that they were met with open arms makes me believe in a very, very bright future for the Swedish youth climate movement.

    Thank you so much to all of you who participated, not only in the workshop but in the conference as a whole. What you do is vital!

  • Redesign@Power Shift

    Vänner!

    Efter helgens Power Shift så är vi många som är lite tagna och som behövt lite tid att smälta intrycken. Själv känner jag fortfarande lika mycket entusiasm och framtidstro som i söndags. Satan, vad bra det var!!

    Adam leads workshopUtan att låta för självförhärligande så var min största höjdpunkt när jag och Charlotte höll workshopen Redesign the World med en skara av de mest fantastiska unga klimatledarna jag stött på. Det engagemang som ni visade och de klartänkta idéerna som kläcktes samt utvecklades till konkreta projekt värmer fortfarande hela mig. Bara det att  projekten som startades pitchades till nyckelpartners inom en timme efter workshopen säger en hel del om vilka personer som fanns på plats under konferensen. Att dom mottogs med öppna armar är en stor anledning att tro på en ljus framtid för Svenskt klimatarbete.

    Tack så enormt mycket till er som deltog, inte bara i workshopen utan i hela konferensen. Det ni gör är livsviktigt!

  • 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.
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