Post by Cecilia Sbernini
On Monday morning, June 18th, there's nothing
better than a youth meeting to get us inspired and ready to change the world. We’re
at the People Summit again, the auditorium is filled with young people eager to
hear what the more experienced have to say about us, about being young and
about wanting to have youth voices heard.
It was great to see people from all the corners of Brazil, and some corners of the world gathered in one place. The speakers talked about the importance of creating networks, of working together and sharing our ideas to create projects and find support for our efforts using the earth charter as inspiration and guide. Various projects and initiatives were presented and youth from Canada, Brazil and the Netherlands shared their accomplishments and challenges. Severn Suzuki expressed her sadness about being in Rio, twenty years later, talking about the same issues, with more gravity and urgency for action. She spoke in Rio in 1992 as a child worried about her future, now she speaks as a mother, worried about her children's future. And it's exactly this worry about
future
generations and the love we feel for them that will serve as a tool to make
people care. It’s this inter-generational love that will allow us save our
planet.
Perhaps the most shocking to me was Marina Silva's speech on how we've become consumers of emotions: she drew on Severn's speech when we all got emotional and prompted us to act on that emotion rather than become merely consumers that once the emotion fades the ideas expressed become obsolete and leave space to a realistic and pragmatic world. She reminded us that people that make a better world have imagined something impossible believed in it and created it. That's what we have to do, the world we imagine when we're boosted with emotions is the same we need to imagine in front of obstacles and hardship. This is how we become part of real changes.
On Monday morning, June 18th, there's nothing
better than a youth meeting to get us inspired and ready to change the world. We’re
at the People Summit again, the auditorium is filled with young people eager to
hear what the more experienced have to say about us, about being young and
about wanting to have youth voices heard. It was great to see people from all the corners of Brazil, and some corners of the world gathered in one place. The speakers talked about the importance of creating networks, of working together and sharing our ideas to create projects and find support for our efforts using the earth charter as inspiration and guide. Various projects and initiatives were presented and youth from Canada, Brazil and the Netherlands shared their accomplishments and challenges. Severn Suzuki expressed her sadness about being in Rio, twenty years later, talking about the same issues, with more gravity and urgency for action. She spoke in Rio in 1992 as a child worried about her future, now she speaks as a mother, worried about her children's future. And it's exactly this worry about
future
generations and the love we feel for them that will serve as a tool to make
people care. It’s this inter-generational love that will allow us save our
planet. Perhaps the most shocking to me was Marina Silva's speech on how we've become consumers of emotions: she drew on Severn's speech when we all got emotional and prompted us to act on that emotion rather than become merely consumers that once the emotion fades the ideas expressed become obsolete and leave space to a realistic and pragmatic world. She reminded us that people that make a better world have imagined something impossible believed in it and created it. That's what we have to do, the world we imagine when we're boosted with emotions is the same we need to imagine in front of obstacles and hardship. This is how we become part of real changes.
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