What is a global climate strike? Why is it important? Why does this matter?

Well, first I am going to introduce you to a very inspirational girl called Greta Thunberg. It’s very rare nowadays that you haven’t heard her name. She has been doing inspirational things and has been teaching people to do better regarding the climate crisis since she was brought to the surface for her speech at the UN. In short, Greta is a teenage environmental activist on climate change and has gained international recognition. To take action she held up a poster in front of the Swedish parliament that said “School Strike for Climate.” Soon other students from around the world caught inspiration from this act of protest and started School strikes under the name of Fridays For Future.

Alex and Talia who are service leader for the reef keepers reached out to all of the Service leaders in OSC. My service was one of the first services to be asked to help with the climate strike as it is a part of the habitat side of our service, we were also one of the only services that directly focused on the environment. They put out an idea that we strike on the 27th of September from our classes as the rest of the world would be doing. I thought this was a brilliant idea and a way our little OSC community could recognize the problem. The point was it was completely student-led and we didn’t tell the teachers that we were planning on organizing the strike. Unfortunately, we could strike outside the parliament as some embassies wouldn’t allow that of the students that are attending our school. We also still wanted to keep our place in school and didn’t want to risk being expelled. So, we shared our secret climate strike idea with Mrs Clover (MYP coordinator and Reef Keepers service advisor) and the Secondary Principal. The alternative plan that we came up with to all leave 3rd period abruptly at 12:00 (this would still be disrupting the class environment) and we will all head to the auditorium, watch a video of Greta and then talk about the climate strike. We would be in the auditorium until lunchtime, we only decided to strike for 30 minutes because we had students from a range of different ages and we couldn’t keep them for long because they would lose focus. We had to pitch this to the rest of the service leaders.

At first, the leaders were confused about the point of the protest if we weren’t going to leave school. It took a week and many lunchtime meetings to convince them to help us with the protest.  Someone who took great interest in the protest was Josh Jackson and put out his ideas to create posters and write notes to the ministry of environment or even to the president! Our final plan for the assembly was to have a presentation about what the climate strike is about then we would show a video of Greta. Luca brought up the idea to make a pledge that each of the students would sign (if they wanted to) to protect the environment. Then we would end the assembly with the notes that we would send to the government.

Preparation, we had a week left until our protest, Josh had an idea that if we all got there early in the morning we could protest at the front of school as everyone was walking in. From 1:30 to 6:00 Luca, Alex, Josh and I spent our afternoon making our posters that had climate strike slogans written all over them. “FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE,” my poster said. Many spelling mistakes and rewritten posters were made that afternoon and some would say Josh didn’t have much of a future in a spelling competition… I downloaded an incredibly powerful video that Greta had made at another climate conference that we were going to show at our strike in the auditorium. I was also in charge of booking the auditorium, making sure that the presentation would be ready, and that the video would be working for us to present it.

 

“You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you…If you really understood the situation and still keep on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.”

– Greta Thunberg 

“SIGN THE PLEDGE SIGN THE PLEDGE SIGN THE PLEDGE SIGN THE PLEDGE”

is what we shouted as we were walking through the hallways on Friday morning starting our climate strike protest. We were at the front as many from our grade trailed behind as we walked over the school spreading awareness about the climate crisis.

The assembly was incredibly successful and everyone came to be a part of our strike leaving class and protesting for Fridays For Future. Everyone watched the video and the presentation went very smoothly. My whole service came to the strike and participated in the auditorium. Everyone wrote their notes that we are going to send to the government. Through the assembly, I was in charge of the presentation and playing the video upstairs while everyone spoke on the podium for the pledge and the notes.

This addressed one of my goals for my service this year which was to focus on the habitat side of my service Housing and Habitat and I found this to be a perfect way to start off and recognize that side of the service. We need to care about what we are doing to our environment and the people that aren’t making a change and who are relying on the youth to do so is wrong. People need to understand the problem soon so that we can make a change before we have no place to live anymore. Even though it was cliche but like the posters said, there is no planet B.