Surrey Youth Climate Conference

On Friday 24th March 2023, I co-hosted the Surrey Youth Climate Conference and presented a ‘Teach the Student’ session: a ‘Teach the Teacher’ style session but aimed towards a mixture of educators and students themselves.

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During the process of planning this event, I became a Campaign Coordinator for the Teach the Teacher campaign and I knew that I wanted to find a way to incorporate our campaign into this event. And that’s where the idea for my ‘Teach the Student’ session was born!

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The session consisted of key topics including: Climate Basics, Climate Justice, Climate Anxiety and Climate Education. Aiming to help the attendees with their basic foundations of climate understanding before the rest of the workshops throughout the day and to get the conversation surrounding climate education started.

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The idea for the conference came from hushed whispers during a meeting - an idea between two secondary school students trying to find a way to improve climate education in our area - one step at a time.

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Research shows that only 4% of students feel that they’re adequately educated about climate change. Just 4%! 4% of the generation who’s futures will undoubtedly be severely impacted by the climate crisis. How can we be expected to fight the climate crisis if we’re not even taught about climate change in our schools?

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It’s crystal clear that today’s students feel unequipped to face the failing system that we are set to inherit and it should not be down to young people to educate themselves - yet we are forced to.

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Events like these that bring young people, educators and decision makers, whether it be national or local, together are vital to fighting the climate crisis - collaboration, communication and working together are key.