YouthBlast

Today was our first day of actual conference activities. In the morning we went to YouthBlast - the official youth forum part of Rio+20.




At the plenary session we had our first experience using headphones to translate from Portuguese to English. We heard from Brazilian environmentalist and politician Marina da Silva about the importance of intergenerational leadership and alliance. We also head from Hannah Thomas, Green Jobs Director at The Otesha Project UK. She spoke about the need for decent work for young peoples the green jobs industry and the need to ensure that the green economy is not as exploitative, marginalising and unstable as the current economy.

During the morning session we also heard from a 12 year old native American boy from Colorado who has created a network of children who do amazing things to protect the environment. He was involved in a project that saw one person from each US state bringing legal action against the government for not sufficiently protecting the environment. Some cases lost, but some won and there is Federal action in progress.




To close the morning session the creator of 1990s children's cartoon Captain Planet appeared, to tell us how the idea for Captain Planet came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Most of the room knew Captain Planet and there was extreme excitement when he appeared. In a South American twist, we danced the macarena with Captain Planet. For those of you who were Captain Planet deprived:





After the close of this session, WAGGGS held its first side event on the engagement of young people in sustainable development. We played some games to show how we introduce sustainability and advocacy to girls and then we held some mock UN negotiations with or participants to help them understand where different Rio+20 stakeholders are coming from. A quick wander around showed us that our event had easily the most people.






After YouthBlast we returned to the headquarters of the Brazilian Girl Guides for some training, practice and preparation for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will be attending the first official day of the conference and running a larger side event on youth led sustainable development solutions.

Location:Rio de Janeiro