So, today was a very busy Saturday! I woke up super early and went after breakfast to the COY (Conference of Youth) meeting place in Copenhagen with the WAGGGS team. We walked, took the bus, metro and then walked some more in the dark!
Okey, so at the COY we met a lot of people, around 500 all in the same hall room.(I am not really sure of the exact number, but I do know that there were youth representatives from almost 150 countries!) All of them gathered there for the same purpose: ' to fight climate change'. WAGGGS was there to speak on behalf of the 10 million girls and young women in the organization and all other women who are the most vulnerable to get their voice be heard. It felt really great to do so!
The COY started with introductions, welcoming games, and then youth participants joined the group that they found themselves most likely contented with. Well for example, I chose to join a group that talked about 'talking to the media' and heard some advice on how to behave in front of a journalist who is asking a lot of questions deviating from the main issue intended. The second workshop that I joined was a more physically active type. The workshop talked about arts and how to use it wisely to express ones' demands. There was a really cool guy in the group from Kenya who shared with us his simple song and dance. (The lyrics to the song are: Globe is warming! Climate is changing! - and that's it, but it was GREAT!) I could feel the positive energy all over the place!! wohoo. Another guy rapped for us about climate change-not bad at all.
After lunch it was back to the big hall room and we sat with total strangers in groups of approximately 10 youth members and just discussed about their expectations from the COP15 conference. I was with a group with youth participants from India, the US, New Zealand, Norway, France, Denmark. It is was immediately agreed upon us that Global Warming should be solved because we would all of us be affected of it sooner or later since we are all citizens of the Earth! (Some participants shared stories of how they have already started to feel the impacts of climate change; where as others shared stories of how they are working with their association on the issue of decreasing the CO2 emissions - I gave several examples of what we at WAGGGS are doing.
ps: if you are curious and would like to get more information, why not enter www.wagggs.org and check them out! =) )
By the end of the meeting day, each person chose a 'working group' to join and work with during all of the COP15 conference. I chose to be a 'bridge person' between the Communication Working Group and the Action Group! This should be a lot of fun and a big challenge too! This means I have to keep up with the work of both groups and keep a track of both of their decisions.
After that looong day, we had an even longer walk in the lovely Christmas decorated streets of Copenhagen. There was saw the WWF exhibition of an ice sculptured polar bear left in the open air! Such a cool idea by WWF to show that polar bears will soon become extinct if the globe's temperature keeps on increasing!
After our delicous fried rise with vegetable dinner, we had a meeting for us delegates. This gave each WAGGGS member the opportunity to share her experience throughout the day with her guiding friends. (Yes, even though we have only known each other for 3 days, we have all become real good friends. Well, that's normal in guiding, isn't it? =) )
Aaaaand, late in the evening we had our INTERNATIONAL EVENT!! You can imagine the colorful and tasty table that we had in front of us. Food from 20 different countries! DELICIOUS! I brought with me HALAWA to represent Lebanon and the majority liked it a lot =). I liked too a lot of what I tasted...hmmm, let's see. I can remember the good Australian chocolate-coconut biscuits, the Bolivian vitamin drink (that tastes a lot like hot Swedish Gløgg, but is instead of wine, it was made up of ALL SORTS OF grounded vegetables and beans and spices! Extremely mouth satisfying and healthy). I tasted everything on the international table and was very happy when Ostara said that she was glad to have a walk with me after dinner around the neighborhood- just for the sake of digesting all the food! But seriously, cultural gatherings are just the best! I am meeting a lot of new faces everyday from all over the globe and was even more glad when I saw some Lebanese delegates also in the COY conference today! Good to know that in Lebanon, other people are also concerned with Climatic Change.
Aha, that was a long blog text today...I promise I will try to keep it more short next time!
See you tomorrow!
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