Recently I had the chance to take part in Friends of the Earth England, Northern Ireland and Wales’ Basecamp event. As someone based in the Brussels office of Friends of the Earth Europe, getting to visit a national group and see how they do things, plus not being in the stressful role of main organiser of a massive event was a real treat! Here are some impressions and lessons I took from the event.
Written by Sophie Manson, YFoEE network coordinator
Getting to know Young Friends of the Earth
Although Basecamp is an annual event for local Friends of the Earth (FoE) groups in the UK, Young FoE (YFoE) was also present and ran a programme of workshops in a yurt they were sharing with the ‘youth and education network’ of FoE.
YFoE was set up in 2012, and over the last two years they’ve been busy recruiting activists and developing new campaigns and actions, and working with Friends of the Earth to think about how as an organisation they can be more diverse and engage young people.
They are different to the Youth and Education Network, a coordination of 400 volunteer educators who go into primary and secondary schools across the UK to deliver environmental education – which was also pretty impressive and news to me. They’ve got loads of great games and resources for working with children and young people, which is a fun way to learn and get involved with the environment.
I spent most of my weekend hanging out with YFoE in the youth yurt, where they organised sessions for people to learn more about YFoE and Young Friends of the Earth Europe (YFoEE), get involved in dirty energy campaigning, contribute to discussions about how and why we might want to make FoE more engaging for young people, and discuss attitudes to over-consumption and identity that seem to be a big issue in British youth culture today. I lheard about some of the really funny and high impact actions they’ve done, which are starting to help make a name for them in the wider environmental network in the UK (in particular when they caused a media stir and got blocked from eBay when they put politician Lord Browne’s ‘integrity’ up for auction).
Embracing diversity and being accessible
Another part of the weekend that I found really useful and challenged my own thinking for YFoEE were the discussions held on diversity and accessibility in FoE, which were co-led by Jannet Hossain from YFoE.
As an organisation FoE recognises that the people they currently attract and engage with most are not reflective of the communities where they are based or of broader society, and not at all reflective of the wealth of different people and communities across the UK who are concerned about or affected by the environment, health and society.
There are a lot of things we can learn in order to overcome barriers to participation. One of the things FoE has started to do is create a set of 11 questions that local groups can use to ask themselves on how they embrace diversity and make their group accessible to all, and use the responses to create an action plan.
At the same time, we can get critical input from communities we would like to engage with, and learn from feedback about the way we run events and design our campaigns and communications. These are all steps we can take to help make our organisation more relevant and reflective of all the people whose interests we claim to work for.
These ideas were inspirational for our own Equality and Interculturalism working group at YFoEE, who are working to develop a manifesto and a culture for this in our work and network – truly putting into practice our vision and values of equality, justice and cultural diversity. Because we know that this is one of the most important aspects of our fight for a better world.
Engaging young people
I’m quite often asked by Friends of the Earth groups from across Europe the big question “But HOW do we get more young people involved?”, so I was really happy to take part in a session where a whole range of age groups came together and explored the barriers to youth participation within FoE. I was even happier that developing this work is a new project of a working group and that they plan to develop an action pack on how FoE groups can be more engaging for young people!
A number of points stayed with me from the session. For example, hearing that older people sometimes feel a lack of confidence about approaching younger people, whilst younger people can feel intimidated and less knowledgeable, stopping them from joining in. Some of the ideas that came up to counter these problems included FoE groups coordinating with pre-existing student environment groups, so that when students graduate, they already see their local FoE group as a friendly place to move to next. In other cases, FoE groups are supporting the set-up of new YFoE groups in the hope that this will attract new young people to their local activities, and that the new YFoE and existing FoE groups can cooperate locally.
There are lots of examples, models and ideas for successful intergenerational cooperation within FoE, and hopefully when their action pack for engaging young people is ready, it will be full of helpful tips relevant to groups across the FoEE also struggling with engaging young people. This is definitely something we’ll be keeping our eye on and sharing with you when it’s ready!
Greg from YFoE promoting the YFoE Yurt at Basecamp
All in all, it was a great privilege, a wonderful learning experience and lots of fun to be at basecamp, and to meet so many great and inspiring people from both YFoE and those who support youth and education work within FoE. The idea was even floated that a future YFoEE summer camp could run in cooperation with basecamp, which is quite an exciting thought to finish on…
For more about the event, you can visit the FoE website, and view their photo report from the event.
If you want to find out more about YFoE in the UK, visit their website or join their facebook group.