Tuesday 8 December

Today our delegation carried out a side event. Side events are a possibility for the different NGO’s present at COP 15 to introduce themselves and tell people what they want to achieve in Copenhagen.

We started with a song in Spanish to attract attention and get people gathering around us. Then we played the game “Gordian Knot”, which we used to symbolize climate changes being a very complicated issue. We tried to untangle the knot, which is difficult and involves everyone, just as the climate changes.
In the end of the game all participants where standing in a circle, holding hands, which symbolized unity of the world.

We also did a quiz with the audience. One volunteered to participate in the quiz “Who wants to be a climate change expert?” and won a nice badge from Brazil.

Afterwards we shared stories of what girl guides in Egypt, Bolivia and Madagascar are doing to fight the climate change. And finally we wrote the words “one voice” on our foreheads to show, that we are ten million girl guides in the world, speaking in one voice. We marked some of the audience in this way as well.

Today’s actions

During the day a lot of crazy actions from a variety of NGO’s took place. One of them where the YOUNGO Constituency being on the spot again. This time they made a “bed-in” action to show that we are all in the same bed, and it’s time for politicians to wake up. We experienced today that dressing up is the best way to attract media attention, so maybe that’s something to consider.

In the European Youth Climate Movement we decided today to run a euro-wide action. We want all young Europeans to call their head of state tomorrow at a certain time, to claim that Europe should cut off at least 40 per cent of their emissions (compared to 1990 levels). Right after this we made a video to be put on Youtube. It shows young people saying “cut of at least 40 per cent” in different European languages. Go look for it at Youtube and look for the WAGGGS scarfs!