YEE held the training course of “Youth for environmental future” at Slunakov, an ecological center in Czech Republic, between 8th to 15th of July. YEE gathered 30 youth workers and young people from Europe to learn about environmental decision-making and how it is conducted on different levels: from local to international, to discover more about concrete international frameworks and explore different ways of bringing them back to local reality. The training course was the second activity of the project “Active youth-better environment!”

For one week we had an intense programme composed of different methods to understand and practice environmental decision making. We shared our own stories and experiences of how we got involved in environmental protection in fishbowl discussions, we brought gender perspective to climate change, we learned about international frameworks such as the Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals, Aarhus Convention and Bern Convention and we have had the chance to explore how such documents are developed in connection with young people and how young people can follow the implementation and work on these documents more. With Zanna Vanrenterghem from CAN Europe we discussed how different groups are affected differently by climate change and after Zanna became the UN Secretary General for The World Climate Simulation. At the end of the week we became facilitators by organising our own workshops at the open space and practicing facilitation within the group.

In addition to all, we had an evening programme for each day, to get to know each others’ organisations at NGO Market, learn about different cultures and traditions on the Intercultural Night and have a bonfire night and of course a farewell party in the end.

Now we are back home preparing our local actions to share our knowledge and experience gained in this training. Stay tuned for more news from our project - the next steps are launch of the campaign “Take a green stand” and local actions of 10 different YEE members!

Photos from the training course.