Friends of the Earth Cyprus hosted a 3-day Fossil Free training as part of System:Reset project and ECF’s project “Fossil free Cyprus”, on a beautiful venue by the sea, overseeing the disturbing infrastructure of the LNG terminal that will be constructed in Limassol, Cyprus.
During the 23rd to 25th of October, Friends of the Earth Cyprus collected the visions of young people across Cyprus on their energy future, the upcoming natural gas projects on the island and the creation of a fossil free movement.
Participants were from a diverse background and different levels of experience in campaign building and environmental awareness. Thus, in an effort to be as inclusive as possible, FoE Cyprus covered the basic level of campaigning, spreading our message across and building our story in order to gather as many perspectives as possible.
Youth activists had the chance to see how a successful movement should look and were introduced to interactive tools and processes. The group formed together the vision, objectives and strategies of a fossil free campaign that can be applied at the local level. Participants had a lot of time to reflect and discuss over the fun afternoon activity, where we all created three dimensional pink elephant masks to “address the elephant in the room” (see the photo and let’s agree how awesome this is). The elephant as a mascot has a lot of meaning depending on the context; for our Fossil Free campaign the elephant stands for the government’s narrative to use fossil gas as a solution and not a problem that will hijack our free, safe and renewable energy future.
As a final task, we let participants express in their own ways and create short stories with their key messages.
By the end of the training it was clear among everyone that the future of energy transition relies on renewable energy and there is increasing pressure on international oil companies to curtail investment in new oil&gas, coming from investors, climate activists and governments.
We need a transition that deals with decarbonisation and security of energy supplies simultaneously and in a balanced way.
