Youth Summit Report 2020

Plant-for-the-Planet is a worldwide network with 88.000 climate ambassadors, program coordinators and helping hands across the world. Once a year, we have the chance to network and exchange ideas for the upcoming events and projects.

This year was twice as exciting because it was the first online Youth Summit ever!

The worldwide youth gathering started on Friday, 16th of October at 12 UTC online with an Opening Ceremony. Everybody was really excited and curious to hear from the inspiring speakers and coaches we invited.

After the Opening Ceremony Frithjof Finkbeiner trustee of Plant-for-the-Planet gave a facts update about our general strategy, our mission and vision and a short overview of our planting activities on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico.

Later that day we had the honour to welcome our CTO Sagar Aryal. He is working with his team on the development of our Plan-for-the-Planet App. In his presentation Sagar talked about the ongoing development process and future plans to improve our App.

In the following we were very happy to once again welcome Craig Goldblatt. He is an inspirational impact coach, who taught us how to become a better version of ourselves and use this power to become even better leaders for our vision.

Early the following morning our program continued with a compelling workshop titled “Are we all in the same boat?” by Nilda Inkermann and Tobias Kalt both PhD researchers at the University of Kassel. The workshop put the issue of climate justice in the main focus and gave the participants an insight about problematic ways of talking about climate changes.

Right after that we welcomed our next guest Iris Hordijk. She is a forest ecologist and PhD researcher at the ETH Zurich and had a very interactive presentation about the interrelations and differences of global forests. Our ambassadors had the chance to refresh and deepen their knowledge about the correlation between succession, dominant and rare species.

After that it was time to introduce the international teams. Our global team is big but just to name a few: Ghana, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and Czech Republic presented their work on location and gave updates on new project ideas to the participants.

The second day was filled with interesting speakers and workshops, so we did not hesitate to introduce our next speaker, Helen Harwatt. She is a researcher at Harvard Law School and together with her we discussed the role of global food systems in the climate crisis.

The final workshop for this Saturday was under the motto “Make yourself the most Influential Self”. With our guest speakers Daniel Böse and Louis Motaal we talked about how our message could become more relevant for media and therefore gains political weight. We had a lively discussion and left the workshop with a mind full of new ideas.

The final day of our online Youth Summit 2020 started with a presentation by two longstanding members of Plant-for-the-Planet. Udeh and Yugratna summarized under the title “What’s next? A year without climate Negotiations” the most important worldwide summits, conferences and dates that we should keep in mind and get involved with.

On Sunday we had the honour to welcome Felix Finkbeiner, I think I don’t need to introduce him, on our Youth Summit. He joined live from our planting site in Yucatán peninsula in México. Felix showed us the research site and shared his latest research updates.

Last but not least at the end of our long but very inspiring and motivational Youth Summit we had the Award Ceremony from the Social Media competition. The ambassadors who created the biggest social media impact with different types of posts, e.g. photos, video hashtags… won the challenge. Congratulations to our 4 winners: Paul G. Caterina B., Katharina B. and our group of 3 from Cancun.

At the end we want to express a big thank you to all of our guest speakers and coaches, who shared their knowledge with us and made this special Youth Summit enriching and valuable! Also a big thanks to our Secretariat for the amazing organizations and implementation.

And an especially big thank you goes to all of our participants, who stayed with us during these three intense days and who made this year’s summit vibrant, full of energy and with many creative ideas.

If there is nothing left to say: STOP TALKING START PLANTING! Join our global network and become part of one of the largest youth-led organizations worldwide. Help us to plant #trilliontrees and empower children to climate justice ambassadors.

If you are curious now and want to know more about the Youth Summit 2020 check out our YouTube channel. There you will find some videos highlighting the best talks

Article by: Theresa de Boer, Volunteer at Plant-for-the-Planet

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