Climate change: panorama, challenges and opportunities for young professionals.
The course Climate Change: Panorama, Challenges and Opportunities for Young Professionals is an online training course aimed at people who seek to learn about the possibilities of acting in the areas of climate change and sustainability. From the presentation of introductory concepts on climate change and deepening into sectoral themes related to the climate crisis, the YCL Course aims to boost professional development to work in careers and projects that express your purpose.
Cross-border/international
Portugal
Italy
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Hungary
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Austria
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: France
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Germany
Santa Cruz da Madeira (Portugal insular).
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Environmental Association Youth Climate Leaders Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Felipe Last name of representative: Oliveira Gender: Male Nationality: Brazil Function: Vice President of the Board Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Travessa de São Pedro, n8 Town: Lisbon Postal code: 1200-432 Country: Portugal Direct Tel:+351 911 067 922 E-mail:coordportugal@youthclimateleaders.org Website:https://redeycl.org/about-us-ycl
The climate crisis and structural youth unemployment are two of the main problems of the 21st century. While young people face greater barriers to entering the labor market and achieving financial stability, despite already representing the majority of the global population, they also deal with an uncertain future due to the impact of the climate crisis on their lives.
To reverse this scenario, the YCL course seeks to boost the professional insertion of young people in the new economy through climate education and building bridges with organizations that already operate in the sector, thus generating greater knowledge and information on the subject. The climate change course is a climate training course that, in addition to high-quality content, also offers access to a rich network of opportunities to engage in the transition to a more just and carbon-neutral society.
During the course, participants will be able to hire personalized individual support from the facilitating specialists, as well as ask for suggestions for contacts in the areas that most interest them. After the end of the course, graduated students will join the international network of YCL, having exclusive access to opportunities for professional exchanges, job openings, and mentoring.
The YCL course has as main objectives:
* Present different forms of action in the area of climate change and sustainability;
* Boost professional development, as well as the career transition of young professionals with the aim to work in projects and jobs that express their purpose;
* Offer practical experience through skills that have not been prioritized so far by academic and corporate education, and that are directed to socio-environmental demands, in a context of equal opportunities, respect for diversity, and sustainable development;
* Expand the YCL Network in order to connect young professionals around the world and co-create an increasingly influential and diverse network in a global change process.
Climate change;
Leadership;
Networking;
Employability;
Capacity-building
In terms of sustainability, the YCL course seeks to enable its graduates to act as leaders in their careers based on the following topics:
Present different forms of action in the area of climate change and sustainability;
Boost professional development, as well as the career transition of young professionals with the aim to work in projects and jobs that express their
purpose;
Offer practical experiencie through skills that have not been prioritized so far by academic and corporate education, and that are directed to socio-environmental demands, in a context of equal opportunities, respect for diversity and sustainable development;
Expand the YCL Network in order to connect young professionals around the world and co-create an increasingly influential and diverse network in a global change processes.
We also seek to make this change sustainable as our fellows become part of our network, where they can access different climate job openings, as well as have access to other climate professionals.
We encourage our fellows and new participants in our training courses to make donations so that we can increasingly serve people in need with scholarships. At the same time, we are looking for other sources of funding through public notices and partnerships with companies and institutions.
The main objectives were to encourage young people to act in favor of sustainable engagement, provide an overview and disseminate knowledge about climate change actions and provide them with professional guidance to leverage careers in climate change issues. The results of the course are positive in several aspects, such as the creation of a network to connect people interested in the subject. It is important to emphasize that the YCL network continues to expand with the addition of new fellows from different parts of the globe to each new class of the YCL course. The YCL platform was an efficient tool to connect those interested in learning more about climate change and expertise with specific knowledge. The knowledge acquired during the YCL time also excited young people about climate change actions during the course.
We must also emphasize the power of our network in bringing together people from different regions of the globe, as well as from different socio-cultural realities. Through our platform and course, we provide a safe space for exchanging and sharing knowledge and experiences for our fellows.
We at YCL provide scholarships because we believe in a world where people, in their diversity, are employed and at the forefront of decision-making. We also understand that access to knowledge about the climate crisis is something that circulates inside a bubble, distancing even more young people from these debates. With that in mind, we offer our grants to people who fit into these categories:
People in conditions of economic vulnerability;
Black and brown people;
People from traditional communities;
Our scholarship selection process is a single step, this form. Candidates will be evaluated according to 2 criteria: diversity and motivation.
Diversity: reaffirming our commitment to diversify the YCL network, we will prioritize the selection of scholarship holders for non-white, peripheral, low-income people, from traditional communities, PCD, LGBTQIA+.
Motivation: we will give preference to people who are interested in the climate area and who see the YCL course as a career booster.
Our scholarships come from donations such as companies and organizations. The course and the institution are funded by paying students. In some cases we had collaboration of organizations that paid the fee for the students.
The rule we follow is to have at least 40% of scholarship holders. In past editions we had:
2021 (1st semester): 45% of the participants had some kind of scholarship;
2021 (2nd semester): 43% of the participants had some type of scholarship;
2022 (1st semester): 48% of the participants had some kind of scholarship
2022 (2nd semester): 40% of the participants had some kind of scholarship.
The class of 2023 (1st semester) is not yet closed, but we reiterate that scholarship holders represent at least 40% of the class.
The society concern about the environment and a more sustainable world has grown globally and the topic of climate change has been the subject of much discussion in various thematic axes of society. Thus, several opportunities have arisen for specialists in climate change globally.
Our impact report shows that:
• 69% of fellows say YCL has directly contributed to their careers;
• 88% of fellows believe that the YCL network is YCL's main asset;
• More than 90% of fellows would recommend a YCL learning journey for people who want to start their work journey in climate or sustainability fields or make a career transition into this field.
• Networking and professional opportunities are considered YCL's greatest contributions to fellows;
• In the view of our fellows, fostering new relationships and expanding knowledge about climate change are YCL's main attributes;
We emphasize that in our activities we serve not only people from the European continent and from the areas covered by this award. So the data presented here reflects what our fellows responded globally.
Our scholarship policy works through partnerships with companies and individuals. We also partnered with municipalities. We cite as an example the municipality of Santa Cruz da Madeira, which is part of Insular Portugal and donated scholarships in our course to its residents.
We also have a vast network of mentors around the world who also volunteer to mentor our fellows.
In the case of a course that deals with climate change and how to act on this topic, the areas of knowledge addressed in our program are diverse, and we can mention:
Climate Justice; Purpose and Career; Science of Climate Change; Ocean and Climate Change; Economics of Climate Change; Climate Change Policy; Energy Transition; Change of land use and forest; Livestock; Cities; Communicate the climate crisis; Financial instruments to combat climate change; Amazon; Urban Mobility and Transport; SDG and Climate; The climate agenda as a guide for economic recovery and business development; Pricing of Carbon; Waste and Circular Economy; Theory U; Climate Migrations; Leadership and the Future of Work; Self-knowledge.
As this is an extremely complex topic (climate change) each of the areas chosen for the YCL Course represents one of the areas in society that is affected by climate change, also including important issues for the professional insertion of the students. The interaction between each of these themes brings to our students a view of how complex the issue of climate change is and how we can only resolve this issue through transdisciplinarity view.
We can perceive the added value of this transdisciplinarity from the moment we put people from different areas of knowledge/performance in contact to discuss a topic that affects them in different ways. From these presentations, participants can exchange their experiences to build together new ways of seeing and solving problems, seeking to put themselves in the other's shoes to understand how climate change works in different ways in places and countries.
As employability in the climate change sector is still a recent issue, there is no knowledge of other organizations that act with the same objective as YCL. In this sense, YCL is becoming a leader on this initiative. Therefore, we promote the professional insertion of young people in the new economy through climate education and build bridges with organizations that already operate in the sector, generating a greater knowledge and information on this topic. We offer climate training courses and access to a rich network of opportunities to engage the transition for a carbon neutral society.
After benchmarketing analysis, we realized that there are courses on Leadership and Climate Change on the market, and that they are limited to theoretical explanation of the content. Meanwhile, the YCL Course brings innovation aspects:
* Networking with our speakers;
* Networking within the experts and professionals from different areas, backgrounds and experiences;
* A career mentoring session - focus on insertion in the job market;
* Access to a network of people already working in the field and job opportunities in Climate Change and sustainability sector, sometimes exclusive for the YCL members.
Because it takes place remotely, the YCL Course Climate change: panorama, challenges and opportunities for young professionals. can be replicated in different locations, bringing teachers from different areas of the globe. This allows the course to adress the specificities of each place, thus fostering the discussion: think globally and act locally. This also makes it possible for local trainers to have the opportunity to train people from their regions.
The YCL course lasts 8 weeks, with activities carried out online. Participants must dedicate up to 5 additional hours per week to reading activities. Our methodology operates as follows: 8 weeks of classes, totaling 30 hours. Participants also receive permanent access to class recordings, enabling them to follow the course at their own pace and in different time zones. Another methodology used is mentoring. Our graduates receive a 1-hour session with an optional specialist, to be held within 1 month after the end of the course. This mentor is chosen according to the student's goals and trajectory, among the more than 90 volunteer mentors in the YCL network. As an evaluation, after each class, an evaluation form is sent to the participant with questions about the exposed content. 90% of the forms must be completed (that is, 11 of the 13 forms) for the student to receive a course completion certificate.
The Youth Climate Leaders (YCL) is an NGO with the belief that shared knowledge empowers young people to lead solutions for the climate crisis.
For YCL, the climate crisis and structural unemployment are the two biggest threats against the future of young people. This is because, even though they represent the majority of the global population, young people continue to encounter barriers for accessing job opportunities and economic security, while dealing with an uncertain future due to the impact of the climate crisis. In this sense, our organization has the challenge to promote and contribute to youth employability and the fight against climate change.
According to the YCL 2020 report (we are still working on the activities report from 2020 to 2022) we have the following numbers:
Our network has more than 200 fellows, 50 mentors and 56 partners. We are in 20 countries on 4 continents (our representation in the countries is through our fellows, who are leaders trained by us).
Our future goal is to expand our training more intensively in Europe, with the aim of increasing exchanges between regions and people from the Global South and North.
When YCL started, our goal was to empower and offer opportunities to young people, fight youth unemployment and turned the climate crisis into an opportunity to promote careers with purpose, in favor of a fairer and more sustainable world. It hasn't been that long, but these demands have already grown exponentially.
We have already trained more than 200 young people from 20 countries. What we achieved is impressive. Thus, we think that a good part of our energy was spent on consolidating our model and seeking resources to put our ideas to work on. We continue to improve our methodology and activities, but today we have the experience, management, skills, networks and passion to take our work to the next level.
