Youth-run advocacy organization ClimaTalk will be in Aachen, Germany on May 12 as it partakes in the European draw for the EU Charlemagne Youth Prize. This comes on the heels of ClimaTalk's COP27 Project being announced as the national winner for Austria on March 20, 2023. A full list of national winners can be found here.
ClimaTalk's COP27 nomination for the European Charlemagne Youth Prize is as follows:
The project ‘Making COP27 Accessible for Young Europeans’ by the non-profit organisation ClimaTalk made complex, jargon-heavy UNFCCC processes and developments accessible, transparent and understandable for young people, culminating with live coverage at COP27. The aim was to make high-level climate negotiations relatable to European youth and to foster their active engagement. The project activities started in January 2022 and will end in February 2023. The project team consisted of 19 young volunteers from many different countries, such as Austria, Belgium, Germany, France, Portugal, Romania and Spain. As part of this project, they put together a rich potpourri of versatile activities: 2 infographics, 1 glossary booklet, 1 quiz, and 11 short videos; we wrote 11 articles (4 of which will be published in February); they organised 3 interactive online webinars, conducted 21 interviews and published 9 factsheets and 11 photo reporting posts. With the project, they reached up to 26,000 people per month via LinkedIn, up to 7,000 per month via Instagram and up to 4,300 per month via our website. The project had no funding and everyone worked on a voluntary basis and the team travelling to COP paid for their expenses individually.
As mentioned above, this is a project by ClimaTalk, a youth-led non-profit organisation, registered in Austria that demystifies climate policy and amplifies young people’s voices in the fight against the climate crisis. It was founded in 2020 by the then 21-year-old Austrian Emma Heiling, who has been running the organisation ever since (on a voluntary basis). The team consists of around 100 young volunteers between the ages of 17 and 30 from all around the world, including many EU countries, such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain. The organisation is also organising different projects, like the “Making European Youth Fit For 55” project.
The younger generation is particularly threatened by the climate crisis. One of the biggest leverage in engaging in politics, yet climate policy is a hugely complex and jargon-heavy field. Young people must have the knowledge and resources to engage in climate action. As the UNFCCC Conference Of the Parties (COP) is the most significant event around international climate policy negotiation, yet is very hard to follow and understand. The aim of the project was to make COP transparent and accessible for our young, largely European, audience (with a target age of around 15-26 years old) as well as showcase opportunities where the younger generation can actively participate. They want young people’s voices to be heard to foster a peaceful future, sustainable development, social justice, equality and protection of our environment and make sure they all build on scientific evidence whilst always combating social exclusion and discrimination. The sub aims directly at COP were to bring back to the EU 1) the voices of young Europeans who have made it to COP27 and 2) the voices of young people from the Global South that we usually do not hear enough in Europe.
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