For a week this summer, MELP (Young Friends of the Earth Ukraine) brought together nearly 20 young people from Armenia, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine for the training course: “Youth Ambassadors for Sustainable Living. Renewable Energy and Climate Change Dimensions”. The aim was to build the capacity of ‘sustainability ambassadors’ across Europe to enable them to initiate projects, disseminate information, educate colleagues and become a point of contact for strategic and policy making processes on Renewable Energy and Climate Change issues.
The hugely successful and inspiring event had a range of activities and topics that enabled the effective participation and learning of all the participants. The organisers invited experts to deliver training sessions and lectures on a range of topics from renewable energy sources (RES), RES policies development and implementation: best practices, global impacts of local lifestyle choices on the environment, post 2009 climate change negotiations and the role of youth in the negotiation process, climate change and inter-generational equity in the point of view of sustainable development, organic farming as a pattern of sustainable development, sustainable consumption and production in terms of economic and environmental crises, zero-carbon emission concept and it’s case studies on the implementation.
Further, the participants had a unique opportunity to get knowledge through participation in the sessions as well as visits to local pilot manors in Ukraine, where sustainable patterns of farming and energy sources have been used. The structure of the sessions allowed for an active involvement of each participant in the discussions, making inputs to the whole process.