Qatar in Brussels
Young Friends of the Earth Europe’s alternative youth convergence, ‘Qatar in Brussels’, was held from the 1st – 8th December in Brussels. It was the third convergence of its kind (which started with Cancun in Brussels in 2010 and was followed by Durban in Brussels in 2011) and ran in parallel to the international climate negotiations in Doha, Qatar.
The event brought over 70 young activists from across Europe, and from a broad range of youth movements, together in Brussels for a week of workshops, discussions, and actions. Workshops went in-depth into topics including environmental and social justice, false solutions to the climate crisis, the EU’s role and the limits of ‘growth-led’ economics. Skill-share sessions developed crucial campaigning skills on blogging, social media, values and frames, and non-violent direct action training.
Youth activists followed the negotiations with a daily live link-up to Doha, and connected with the local Power Shift Belgium group – mobilising for and with youth around climate justice issues. Over the course of the convergence YFoEE published blog posts, photos and press releases, all on the website. Below is a testimony from one of the participants, Juliana Okropiridse from Global 2000Jugend (Young Friends of the Earth Austria).
Workshops, sessions, skill sharing
We have a whole week – that is a lot of time. That’s what we thought. Well, it was not enough to include all of the sessions we wanted into Qatar in Brussels (QiB).
Susi, the agenda-mistress [in charge of managing the agenda], did her best to ensure we got the most from each day. This resulted in parallel sessions for participants to choose from, which kept the ball rolling and led to even more exciting conversations during the joint meals, because everyone had done something different during the day.
There were sessions from both external and internal speakers, covering topics such as “History of UNFCCC”, “Climate Politics in the EU”, “What is the COP?” etc. We had very specific workshops about certain campaigns in different countries joining QiB. One room was turned into our “Creative Space”, where we had the possibility to do screenprinting, drawing, reading, dressing up in a costume, or just to let our thoughts go wild. And this was also where we planned and prepared our actions, which was surely the part that bound us together the most.
An important part of the day was the live link-up with Marco Cadena, our contact in Doha. Marco informed us of what was going on at the COP, and we informed him how we planned to react. Often, after those Skype-calls, people stayed for hours to review what they had just heard and discuss what consequences could follow of the decisions in Doha.
Every day was stuffed with so many impressions and we did so many different things during this week, that I can’t even remember all of them.
But one session that remained embedded in my mind was with the Power Shift Movement, held at the end of the day, after dinner, when everyone was exhausted. Despite this, as soon as the presentation started, you could literally feel the tension, energy and motivation in the room. All the dancing people on the screen and Oleg’s moving words set us thinking. Quite a few people even couldn’t resist from shaking their bodies to the music – Global Power Shift, here we come!
Another highlight of the week was the presentation from Communergy, a project by six Irish pupils and their teacher to save energy in their community and school. It was amazing to see how much self-confidence and motivation these young people (four 15 year olds and two 16 year olds) had. They put so much energy into their project and had so many great new ideas, that every one of us was really touched after their talk. Those pupils were bubbling over with ideas and were so proud of their achievements that it gave all of us a quite intense energy boost.
Despite this we still found time to socialize and we partied (a lot), although this meant giving up sleep almost entirely. But this was what turned us into a group with boundless coherence.
