During September and October, the volunteers and employees of GEAI have held 5 Youth Participation sessions on climate and the environment for the Drumshanbo vocational school students. More about the first session you can read in the first Youth Participation blog and about the second session in the September blog.
So what have the third, fourth and fifth session focused on?
The third session was all about climate change and climate warming. Aedín started the session with an introduction to global warming, followed by a discussion where everyone could share their ideas and opinions. After that, the students worked in groups of four. Each group became the “Minister” of a specific sector and had to come up with 3 ways to reduce its emissions, before choosing their best solution. The activity encouraged them to think about climate action, decision-making and practical solutions to reduce emissions.
The fourth session was about fracking in Ireland. This is the topic that started Good Energies Alliance, so our director Aedin gave a presentation on what it is and how it started GEAI. She also talked about LNG and we were happy to see most of the students think LNG should not be allowed in Ireland in their opinion. After the presentation we had a roleplay, where each of the students represented a different demographic, like a gas company rep or a concerned parent and saw how a city council meeting about fracking would play out. We must say it got pretty heated!
Role play excercise during the fourth session
The fifth Youth Participation session was about fast fashion. During the session we talked about what is fast fashion, what is ultra fast fashion and what are our most used fabrics made out of. We also showed 2 videos that captured the crisis fast fashion has created around the world. During the break, the students had a chance to play games and have time for themselves, for example one student created a sketch from the topic of this session! The session ended with a chance to test their knowledge with the online quiz platform called kahoot, something that we definitely will use also in the next sessions.
Pictures from the fifth session
The next sessions will talk more about social media and AI & data centers, we are excited to see which topic is of most interest to the students and what ideas they will have for their own campaign!
