Issue link: https://takingitglobal.uberflip.com/i/1358002
PROLOGUE From April to December 2020, #Decarbonize: #Decolonize, a collaborative, school-based project, brought together K-12 students and educators from 43 countries to learn, challenge, and co-create climate conversations. Under a Talanoa framework - an Indigenous dialogue for building trust and advancing knowledge with empathy and understanding - students shared learning and lived- experiences via blog posts, discussion boards, a virtual art gallery, project mapping, video conferences, and other innovative and engaging virtual experiences. During #Decarbonize over 35,000 global participants (1) Increased their awareness of global impacts of climate resilience, climate justice, and climate mitigation, and (2) Enhanced their contributions to quantify the current progress of nations under the National Determined Contributions (NDCs), and (3) Improved skills and capacity-building for whole-school, local, and global climate action. #Decarbonize is developed and delivered annually by the Centre for Global Education and TakingITGlobal, under the moral patronage of CCUNESCO, and UNESCO (2019), and with the support of the Trottier Foundation, Ocean Wise, and a number of other strategic partners. The #Decarbonize Global Youth Report is produced annually as a culminating activity. It is the world's largest youth-authored synthesis of student education, opinion, and action on climate change. The 2020 Global Youth Report, "What is 'Meaningful Youth Engagement'? A Call for Stakeholders to Mobilize Youth Under 18," was created through a month-long virtual collaborative writing process, involving 103 global lead students across six continents. Their report grapples with the complexity of current and predicted impacts of climate change and its effects on young people's lives, health, rights, and development. The youth involved set forth a call for stakeholders to ensure that young people are meaningfully engaged and participate in the development and implementation of climate policies, programs, and processes that affect them. A process that moves beyond the recognition and identification of young people solely as beneficiaries, and towards engaging them as equal and valuable partners in projects, research, programmes, and initiatives.