The fight against climate change: this time it’s personal

The tide is turning in the battle against climate change. Young volunteers around the world are taking a huge, global issue and making it personal.

The Otesha Project was dreamed up by two young Canadians, Jess and Jocelyn, on a trip to Kenya. Overwhelmed by the inequalities they saw, they felt powerless to change such huge problems, until they brought it down to a personal level. Soon the Otesha Project’s education programs and bicycle tours had reached more than 85,000 people with a message of personal action for sustainability. The project spread to the UK, where the Otesha UK Wild West ’09 tour has just kicked off, taking their two-wheeled revolution out onto the roads of Wales.

Meanwhile, v, Global Action Plan and Bank of America have teamed up to launch Climate Squad, a new programme training young volunteers to lead their own local projects to tackle climate change. Their research report,  Climate Squad: young people’s views on climate change, shows that three quarters think it’s important for them as individuals to take action.