Blogs
1. What new jobs and occupations in the green economy exist for youth to address climate change challenges?
Youth don’t necessarily have many options for occupations/careers, but many volunteer opportunities are available. These include; awareness blogging, and development of new technology in sustainable energy sources, and eco friendly living. Youth, however, do not have many opportunities for occupations in contributing to climate change and the green economy, and this is an ongoing concern which, as we feel, has yet to be properly addressed.
It is also problematic because a large chunk of the youth population cannot afford to volunteer, and it is a problem of the economy that to begin a career you need experience but not everyone has the opportunity to do so. It often happens that one is in a difficult financial situation and simply can’t afford to spend time working without pay.
2. How can youth raise awareness-particularly through mainstream and social media-about the causes, impacts and actions needed to mitigate and adapt to climate change?
With new technology constantly coming out, youth who are updated are learning about these each day. New ideas such as these can and have inspired youth to inform others through blogs, twitter, and other social media websites. Being educated is the first step, and with access to the internet, youth are able to receive opinions from several different sources in order to formulate their own.
Youth are constantly engaged on various social media, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the content they are exposed to will be socially relevant. There should be an effort to engage youth on their level while exposing them to the issues that they need to be knowledgeable about. It’s also worth noting that youth prefer their media to be presented in the form of satire, or comedy, as shown by the popularity of shows like John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” and Jon Stewart/Trevor Noah’s “The Daily Show.” When an effort is made to connect with the youth in a format they find engaging and educational simultaneously, that effort pays off with larger target audience engagement.
3. What particular knowledge do youth bring to policy development and action?
The issue with youth voice in a public political forum is that the voice is generally ignored. There is an opinion that youth are less experienced, less educated, and therefore, less qualified to give their opinions. The issue with this arises when policies are being made that directly affect the youth, and the youth aren’t even being consulted. It’s illogical at best, and insulting at worst.
The knowledge we bring though, is valuable, especially when we are providing our opinions related to decision concerning us.
The youth have knowledge of social media and the communities we exist in, as well as the unique perspective only those our age can give. As millennials a lot of our problems (social or otherwise) have never before existed, or have never before been addressed, and the best way to describe the growth of our generation is to say that we have a lot of growing pains. We are nostalgic for what technologies we had and yet ambitious to develop more, faster, better, all the time.
It's a unique problem that no recent generation has had to face in the manner that we are facing it now, and our opinions on the growth of our societies and the developments of our economies and social programs are invaluable, seeing as we will, literally, inherit this world, with all its beauty and chaos.
How to promote youth civic engagement:
Create community events and groups/clubs that are engaging, informative, and inspiring to youth. Help spread the word about what you can do not only on a global scale, but on a local scale to continue to contribute to what it means to be a global citizen, and lead tomorrow with their knowledge.
Make an effort to not only engage with the youth, but to do it in such a way that they WANT to be engaged. Promoting that our future is in the hands of the youth, and that only we will be able to drive the next generation of community change, and working towards local change.
