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It's International Youth Day! Meet Our Young Advisors
On August 12th every year, the world celebrates International Youth Day. The Youth Climate Justice project is very fortunate to work with so many amazing young people around the globe, especially through the Youth Advisory Team.
Today is International Youth Day and we want to celebrate the incredible young people all over the world who are standing up for their rights and climate action! Thank you from all of us in the Youth Climate Justice team for all that you do.
We also want to take this opportunity to update our network and readers on our wonderful Young Advisory Team.
For our research, we are taking a rights-based, intergenerational approach to explore how justice systems can be made more child-friendly and how children and young people are influencing law and human rights through their climate action leadership on a global scale.
Part of our approach involves working with different advisors – including children and young people themselves.
In June, we shared this blog explaining the role of our Young Advisory Team and the process for selecting 12 Young Advisors. We received close to 400 expressions of interest from children and young people all over the world, which was truly phenomenal. It was very challenging forming a team of only 12 Young Advisors but we are delighted to be connected with many of the other children and young people who applied through our Youth Climate Justice research network.
We’re pleased to introduce you to our first cohort of Young Advisors. Read their bios here.
In July, we met together for the first time with Young Advisors, dialing in from 12 countries, across 5 continents! After beginning with getting-to-know each other activities, our first meeting focused on discussing what 'research' is and how to describe this in an accessible way for other children and young people.
During the second meeting, which was held at the end of July, the Young Advisory Team discussed what the role of a ‘Young Advisor’ really entails and welcomed Niamh, a 17-year-old climate and children’s rights activist from Ireland, to start the conversation. Niamh was a Young Advisor for a Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss in Ireland in 2022 and helped to facilitate and organize the entire assembly. Niamh shared her experiences and reminded the Young Advisory Team that “children know what children need” and that the work they are doing is very important. During this meeting, the Young Advisors focused on the foundations of children’s rights and discussed how different rights as outlined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child relate to the environment and are impacted by the climate crisis.
In the coming months, we will work together to pilot methods that will be used in the research workshops with children, and how to make sure the research is a safe, meaningful experience for the participants.
Our Young Advisors will also be sharing their own work as climate leaders in our blog in the coming months. Stay tuned!