The World Council is a fantastic experience every day. My name is Christine, I am a Change Agent from the YMCA and YWCA in Denmark and will be sharing how I experienced Wednesday of the World Council 2018.
After some inspiring discussions on ‘One Million Voices 2’ and the untold stories of youth injustice to young people during the group work in the morning on, the World Council was heading out of what seemed to be an eternal convention centre to experience Chiang mai and its many interesting traits.
My excursion went to the rainforest and some amazing water falls, it was incredible to be in the forest swamped by the greens, plenty of unknown, strange plants and extremely clean air. In the sharing with other participants I learned a lot of great practices on how to act in favour of the environment as well as how to best inform young people to get them to take responsibility for a sustainable environment, e.g. that in a camp you can just serve vegetarian food without even addressing the lack of meat and thereby make vegetarian meals normal. I will try to gather these best practices and share them in my YMCA, so we can set an example of how to act in a sustainable way and create a global mindset of us all being in this together.
Seeing that the environment is one of our four strategic directions, employment, civic engagement, health and environment, I believe we can truly have a great influence on young people’s lives. I sincerely hope and believe that we can have a great impact if every member of the World Council got as inspired and motivated as me, we will be able to create change and huge impacts on these directions. As climate changes are the most serious challenge for humanity and the planet today I am proud to be part of a movement that has the ability to create immense changes in order to give future generations a better world.
Being at the World Council I get inspired almost every minute; there are so many passionate people in the YMCA creating local impact around all corners of the world. We do many great things, but I get truly motivated to think about how all this sharing, discussions and inspirations that have happened during these days will contribute to an even greater impact ensuring Youth Empowerment for good.
Christine Ravn Lund is a 22 year old YMCA Change Agent from YMCA and YWCA of Denmark.
She is passionate about empowering young people to take part in their community and climate change action.