We’ve come far for a 1 year old 

But – if I do say so myself – our story has been much more dynamic, helping to change things for the better. In the past year we have:

• Toured the country on the climate jobs caravan;
• Sat on a panel with Secretary of State Ed Davey;
• Met young people to talk about Green Jobs;
• Run creative training workshops;
• Held action days across the country, from Huddersfield to Norwich
• And worked with our friends from the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition to lobby MPs to vote for a Green Jobs generating target in the upcoming Energy Bill. Get on board and email your MP here to ask them to vote for the Green Jobs amendment to the Bill, which would help guarantee investment in the renewables sector to trigger job creation.

Green Education: the foundation of Green Jobs  

Most recently we’ve been getting back to basics, to the foundation that underpins all Green Jobs: Green Education. The Government is attempting to remove climate change from the geography curriculum for under 14s. This won’t prohibit teachers from talking about climate change but, worryingly, it means they could leave it out, something the curriculum currently prevents.

If the door to debate is not open to young people – the very people who will bear the impacts of climate change and the decisions of the current Government – we risk choking  their knowledge, skills and inspiration to work towards a clean, fair future.

To help prevent the unjust and dangerous removal of climate change from the curriculum, sign secondary school student and UKYCC local catalyst Esha’s Marwaha’s  petition to Education Minister Michael Gove. We have reached over 20,000 signatures in a week – be the next one to sign!

Tweet Support I support the @ukycc Youth for Green Jobs: Action Day – A green light to green industries = more green jobs. #YfGJ

DO YOUR BIT: EMAIL YOUR MP

Their current plan, in the Energy Bill, isn’t strong enough to create Green Jobs on the scale we need in order to get moving.
If the Energy Bill includes an ambitious carbon-cutting target, then this will ensure that the renewables industry takes off in the UK, creating 1000′s of jobs. (Solar PV creates 7-11 more jobs per Kwh than coal or gas)
As the most unemployed generation in decades (1 in 5 out of work), young people can benefit most from this job creation, as well as safeguarding our future.

Email Your MP who is able to act in the Energy Bill review process and speak out for Green Jobs.

Tweet #YfGJ I’ve emailed my MP as part of @ukycc’s Youth for Green Jobs: Action Day. Be part of it.

Creating Green jobs can get us back on track to cut carbon, get loads of young people into work and safeguard our future. Some say we can’t afford to “green” the economy right now. We say we can’t afford not to.

On Saturday 16th March young people from across the country will be gathering with their friends and peers to ask our MPs to help make Green Jobs accessible to young people across the UK.
We’re calling on MPs to ensure the Government listens to the Climate Change Committee’s advice to include an ambitious de-carbonisation target in the Energy Bill. It’s crucial that we get this target to the Bill and give the green light to green industries to invest in Green Jobs. We are on the brink of laying some fundamental foundations to our clean, fair future. Come join us to make this happen.

What can you do? 5 easy steps to organising an action in your local area

1: Find out who your MP is. Simply enter your postcode and do a bit of research about your MP – what issues float their boat, have they spoken about climate change, the environment, energy or young people in parliament at all?

2: Decide what your action is going to be. We’d love you to come up with your own ideas but here are some ideas to get you going.

3: Gather your materials. What do you need? Get in touch if you’d like some green hard hats. Get your paints, paper, glue etc etc

4: Call your friends, local groups, peers and get them down to join you. UKYCC has organisers across the country, get in touch with us here if and we can see if we have someone in your local area. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, People & Planet all have local groups across the country, why not get in touch to see if your local group wants to come along and join in.

5: Make yourselves heard. Let us know you are organising an action by logging it our special action map and emailing us at uk-programmes@ukycc.org. Get in touch with your local newspapers a few days before to see if they want to come along on the day and write about you. Put posts up on facebook on your personal account and let UKYCC know, tweet, take photos and write about it. Watch this space for suggested hash tags and tweets to use on the day.

While you’re waiting for March 16th, EMAIL YOUR MP! Ask people who are involved in your action to do the same.

A failure to include this target has now opened the door to more out-dated fossil fuels in the UK. And the move jeopardises the expansion of the Green Jobs market. The 50g target  could create 400,000 jobs. With one in five young people out of work, this could provide thousands of opportunities for my generation – but it has not been set.

To ensure this job market grows, businesses need to know its  safe to invest. Policy certainty and clarity is therefore key to stimulate investment and jobs in clean energy industries. many have awaited the Energy Bill with bated breath, as the answer to whether or not the government will provide this certainty.

It allows energy firms to triple the amount they charge consumers to enable the companies to invest in renewable energy (see here). This will increase the amount charged per household from £20 a year today, to £60 a year by 2020.

“I don’t need to get involved in climate change, because I know you’re on top of it,”

Green Jobs for young people – so simple, so obvious – it’ll just happen on it’s own, right?

Since we launched Youth for Green Jobs in March 2012, we keep hearing how “spot on” the concept is, so we thought this would be enough for people to say: “I’m gonna help make that happen”. Problem is – it’s so simple and desirable that it seems inevitable. But it’s not.

We are on the cusp of change; teetering on the edge between two very different futures.

To put it plainly: we’ve only got 7 years to get electricity emissions down to 0%, we’ve got less than 2 years to elect someone who’s going to turn the UK’s confused energy policy the right way round, and take meaningful action internationally. And we’ve got to be building community strength and resilience for the challenges ahead.

If we do this, we can create a world we’re really proud of, to share with future generations.

But it’s not going to happen without you. If you were waiting for the best time to get involved, well – that is now.

Reflecting on our own experiences of how we got involved and built a campaign on Green Jobs for young people, we decided to create a workshop with some of the ingredients that we had found we needed to begin our journey.

Introducing: Youth in Action for Green Jobs: Training Workshop

This is not a careers-talk. It’s not a lecture, it’s not the kind of “training” which endlessly imparts wisdom, skills and knowledge. It will not be lead by an expert panel.

Instead, it aims to facilitate your group’s journey from bringing together your understanding of issues surrounding unemployment and climate change, to knowing what it is you’re going to do together to create the future you want.

The workshop can be tailored to a range of different groups, and you’ll be able to shape the workshop depending on what you most need and find most useful.

You could….

• Use your creativity to draw up a bold vision of the world you want to live in
• Work out why green jobs for young people might be the missing step on the pathway to a future we want.
• Hear stories from youth all around the world and their thoughts on what makes our generations voice and actions so important.
• Get to see how young people are taking action on green jobs near you, in the UK and internationally.
• Most importantly, we hope that all groups and individuals will realise what skills, resources, vision and unique powers you already have, and we will offer you the support to work out how you can use them together.

We hope that interested, curious, and idealistic (yes, I use that word with absolutely no shame or irony) young people seize this opportunity to come together and begin to know what amazing capabilities and resources they have, know that the world needs them, and start hatching a plan of action.

Post-workshop

Whilst I realise I’m bigging up the workshop quite a lot, it’s mainly because I’m excited about what happens after we all go home. All this workshop is, in reality, is a fun, interactive preamble to the awesome things you’re going to do together afterwards.

We see the day as an opportunity to forge new friendships and develop existing ones. We are there just as much to learn all about you as you are there to learn from us.

We aim to keep in regular contact with our new friends and support each other as our activities progress, learn from each others’ work, and, if you want (we hope you do!), make plans and take action together.

We’d like to link you up with the other groups we’re going to visit so that you can begin communicating, sharing and scheming with young people far and wide, if you choose to.

Next steps from now

Over the next 2 months we’ll be refining, practising and getting expert advice to try to make this a top-notch (free!) training experience.

In January 2013 we will present you with a belated Christmas present of (ta-daaa) the Youth for Green Jobs Training Workshop! Perhaps it’ll have a snappier name by then. Perhaps not…

We will be delivering workshops from January onwards. They can last between 1-3 hours depending on what you want.

How to get involved

Get in touch if you would like to reserve a date in the new year. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are preferable. We’ll need minimum 4 weeks notice and it will depend on availability of our trainers who are all volunteers.

Please fill out this simple form:

If there’s anything else you want to ask, or if you would like to help us with our work-in-progress, please email isobel@ukycc.org.

Obviously George Osborne hasn’t received the memo – Green is Working.

Last week, Stop Climate Chaos brought together an alliance of NGOs and their supporters outside the Treasury in London to show that Green policies are working and the Government must safeguard and build on them.

The Treasury’s much-reported attempts to undermine legislation which promotes climate mitigation and renewable energy are out of touch with the economy itself. Analysis from the Green Alliance shows that the green sector of the economy is growing faster than any other sector and already employs 1 million people.

Government policy can be crucial to the future of the green economy and therefore to the opportunities for green jobs for young people – something that lies at the heart of our Youth for Green Jobs campaign.

So, as well as Izzy and Matt joining the other NGOs, our Fran went to 10 Downing Street and handed in a letter from NGOs asking Government to make the right choices for the environment. Two key decisions by Government this Autumn could make all the difference.

1. The Energy Bill: will Government choose to set the UK on a trajectory to a clean energy future, or will it undermine our climate targets by the back door by incentivising new fossil fuel investment.

2. Government is obliged to decide by the end of the year whether to include emissions from international shipping and aviation in the UK’s Climate Change Act and carbon budgets. It must decide in favour of inclusion, otherwise it’s again undermining and watering down commitments under the Climate Change Act.

Both of these decisions are fundamentally about what kind of future society and economy we want. The wrong decisions would undermine the flourishing green economy and the UK’s world-leading climate commitments. The right decisions will set us on a path to a strong green economy that provides green job opportunities for young people.

Photos courtesy of Stop Climate Chaos.

According to media sources, the Prime Minister himself has asked cabinet ministers to
re-examine this proposal in the wake of the former Shadow Welsh Minister, Peter Hain,
stepping down from his post in order to concentrate his campaigning efforts on this project. After previously deciding, under Chris Huhne, that this project did not provide sufficient strategic benefit for the long-term, this latest development would appear significant and offer up benefits including, of course, employment, both in the local area and spread around the UK.

Whilst reportedly costing around £34bn, the project, which would be financed by the private consortium Corlan Hafren, is estimated to have the potential to provide up to 35, 000 jobs in the UK with half of this number in Wales alone. These figures, stated on Peter Hain’s Severn Barrage constituency webpages, have been followed up by promises that the scheme would provide at least 10,000 permanent jobs around the estuary itself.

The figures make impressive reading and if this number of green jobs could be created
for the long-term, could projects such as this provide a much-needed boost to a low-carbon economy? The UK’s renewables industry is in sore need of a ‘skilling up’ of young people to fill future ‘skills gaps’ as evidenced by reports such as UnionLearn’s 2011 Government Response on Low-Carbon Skills. This emphasised the fact that ‘green jobs’ training for young apprentices and skilled workers is lacking in the UK. Government-backed schemes such as the Green Deal alone will need 250, 000 skilled trades-people by 2030, so won’t schemes still in consultation, like a tidal barrage, need long-term jobs planning now?

The answer might seem, perhaps obviously, to be a resounding YES!. Marine tidal projects such as this require skilled-jobs, as does every form of energy generation but particularly renewable energy sources. A key definition of a Green Job as put forward by the UKYCC, among others, is that it should be a skilled job which lasts, and provides opportunity for  self-improvement over the long-term. It is of course important to remember local environmental concerns when weighing up the case for a Severn Tidal Barrage, with worries about the impact upon marine wildlife of such a project being voiced in several quarters. Here I refer to another core aspect of UKYCC’s Green Job definition having “stewardship over the environment at its core”, illustrating the fact that Green Jobs should not only reduce carbon emissions, but must truly adhere to sustainability in every way: safeguarding resources for the future. In this regard the Marine Conservation Society’s comment that “fish and eel migratory routes will be severely inhibited” by such a barrage should be taken seriously by planners.

This being true it’s hard to ignore the opportunity that projects such as this provide for tackling youth unemployment, hardwiring in long-term thinking for a decarbonised economy and securing a resilient energy future in the UK. This is  just one energy project, ironically now ‘gathering steam’, which crystallises so much of the debate around Green Jobs and the UK’s low-carbon economy.

Are you interested in what a Green Job could look like for you and how you might go about getting hold of one? The UKYCC’s Youth For Green Jobs campaign site has got loads of information on what a Green Job is and news of upcoming events and current news on getting more Green Jobs to young people across the UK!

Surfers enjoy the tidal power of the River Severn

But we don’t have to keep quiet about this. As UKYCC travels across the UK with its ‘I Want to Be…’ blackboard, young people are asserting their dreams for the future, and articulating what they want to find in their lives.

I took the portable blackboard to Envision’s ‘My London, My Legacy’ ceremony in London. Envision works with young people to help them create and realise social and environmental projects in their local area. These were school pupils who had decided to use their spare time to make a difference to their community – and this ambition to achieve something special ran right through to their aspirations for the future.

While ‘I want to be… taller!’ is perhaps a relatively realisable target for a 15 year old, other responses showed there was no limiting the aspirations of these young people. Any initial shyness was shrugged off as the students grabbed the pens to state they wanted to “find a cure for cancer”, “be the next Prime Minister” (giving Cameron a chance to finish his term before stepping in of course, not quite revolutionaries here!) and “be as awesome as McGonagall.”

Some of the responses revealed young people’s frustration with the discrimination they face based on what they think adults expect of them – one smart, chatty girl shocked me by immediately responding, “Well, I want to be… NOT a terrorist. Because I’m Muslim, that’s what some people think I’m going to be.” It was hard to hear so bluntly that teenagers are fully aware of others writing their futures off.

However, her reaction, as well as that of a group of boys who wanted to “escape the black stereotype”, was not one of defeat, but of defiance. The sense of frustration with how opportunities for young people to lead successful, happy lives are being threatened fuelled a collective ambition to overcome barriers to achievement. What really struck me was these pupils’ commitment to determining their future – they wanted to take on the responsibility to become “someone who can be looked up to”, “the pride of my parents” and realise “me at my best”.

In running this installation I entered into a honest, empowering discussion with young people around me – about what inspires them, what they want to achieve and ultimately who they want to be. I met young people who are stepping forward to take their chance of a better future back – and this positive energy, which also burst out in an impromptu dancing flashmob, really came through in the most repeated response on the board: “I want to be… happy!”

If you’d like to join the conversation by running this in your local area, get in touch with us! We can help with getting you the resources – all you need is our magic blackboard sheets, chalk pens (and blutack as a back up option!). It only took me five minutes to put up the blackboard, but the honest discussions I had with these students will stay with me a whole lot longer.

Take a look at our how-to guide and get in touch – we’d love to hear your story and see pictures of what you discovered about the people around you. Let’s shape the legacy of those before us by writing the future we want across the UK!

Next stop! The blackboard to Greenbelt festival on 25th August in Cheltenham, so come along and join in – and get thinking about what you want to be!

Climate Caravan does  Edinburgh! 12.05.2012

Edinburgh, famous for bagpipes, tartan and a castle was the first stop for the climate caravan! Outside the Scottish Parliament we met three Scottish Members of Scottish Parliament (MSP). It was great to hear from politicians from three different parties (Green Party, Labour and Scottish National Party) who all were pushing for green jobs. Everyone knows it makes sense!

We then spoke with members of the public which was great to see people from all backgrounds supporting the campaign.

I spoke to one person who talked of the break down in many of the traditional services in Scotland and he spoke of his worry for the youngest generation who need those sectors to be replaced. Replaced with clean and sustainable ones we say!

 Newcastle! 13.05.2012

Similar to Glasgow (my hometown) Newcastle has been affected by the closure of heavy industry. Those job losses in Newcastle, I was told by so many people, is something that the city has not fully recovered from.

We also spoke at a public meeting that had a good presence from the local Green Party as well as many enthusiastic Trade Union members. We heard how the Green Jobs initiative offers the opposite of the austerity cuts that are negatively impacting upon so many of us.

 Derby! 14.05.2012

Sunny, sunny Derby on Monday (25 degrees!). We seen a great response from local campaigners as well as the public in general. A great deal of enthusiasm was apparent for this demand for more jobs in clean sectors. Derby activists are advocating 5,000 new green jobs to be implemented as soon as possible!

In the evening another public meeting is planned taking place with speakers discussing how to make this a reality!

That is the end of my physical journey with the Climate Caravan! I have realised how much support there is for more Green Jobs. As a generation we are facing two massive issues. Climate change could be the defining point of our time and its impacts will be severe in the coming years around the world unless we take urgent and serious action. The second issue that must also be tackled is the increasing unemployment and lack of opportunities for young people. Green Jobs addresses both of these problems with logical and achievable aims. Green Jobs make sense and will make our future so much brighter!