Welcome to the middle of the new year! I have just returned from Luxembourg, where I was on a panel at Schuman High School with two ministers (Education and Energy), among other things. The 13-15 year old students had invited us to discuss the question: COP27 – what’s next and what can we do?

Last summer, the students founded a Youth4planet Action Team at their school to pursue the Global Goals. They had previously gone through film storytelling processes on sustainability and were familiar with AND-BUT-THEREFORE – conclusions. Their goal now is to recruit and train their peers as courageous pioneers for transformation, with an action team in every class, first at their school, then throughout the country.

For two hours, the participants debated COPs, goals, visions, and concrete action. When the moderator asked the audience of 250 students if they trusted older people to take care of their common future, no one stood up. However, after a brief pause, nearly half of them stood up in response to the question of whether they saw the need to take matters into their own hands and were also willing to take action themselves.

As developers of Youth4planet, we draw the conclusion that we need to spread the Action Team model in every way possible. The Power-on Pyramids concept will play an important role once we have secured funding and can effectively develop the elements such as the web app, teaching materials, and artistic concepts.

We are planning discussions on this very soon in Luxembourg, as well as in Hannover and Berlin.