“September 27th, 2019 was the school strike for climate change. Held in Cathedral Square, the protest was aimed at young people to come and lobby for climate action from the New Zealand Government and governments worldwide. It took the form of a strike from school, kids would walk out of school and come march at the Cathedral Square, so that they could disrupt ‘business as usual’.
In Christchurch, I believe we got about 8,000 people. There are heaps of different estimates, but from talking to city councillors – the Cathedral Square is able to take about 10,000 people and we were overflowing out of it, so 8,000 is a pretty rough estimate.
I didn’t really have any title but I acted as the head co-ordinator. I managed the stage managers, speakers and made sure everything was going to plan. Before that, I did a lot of communication to the schools and their logistics with planning the strike and communication with the national team. During 2019, I was the School Strike for Climate New Zealand secretary of the administration group too.
We had just under 10 people involved organising the Christchurch strike, with kids as young as 12 and 13. I was the oldest student member. We had a couple of parents helping out, which was amazing. These kids just got in touch with us, and with the student who originally got the movement started in Christchurch, and said they were keen to be involved. They took on different roles such as organising speakers, speaking at the event, stage managing or taking photos. It was a 100 percent youth-led event.
We wanted to be able to involve as many people as possible, to really show the government that this is what New Zealanders want. So we made it an intergenerational event, but still called it ‘school strike for climate’. We wanted to encourage everyone to come along. We saw people of all ages involved, but this was definitely a youth-led event because it was literally young people speaking and young people organising it. You had young people operating the sound systems and young people in the tent, talking to different press and doing press interviews. Even before then, it was all young people doing so much of the mahi behind the scenes to get it all happening.
It is an event for young people, so it feels only right that young people should be at the head organising it. We know what it’s like to be a young person in Christchurch and New Zealand and we know what would make the event more attractive to young people, as well as more appropriate. We always want to create a sense of hope at the strikes and I feel like we can do that best when we know exactly who we are targeting the hope at.
That is literally just people like us.
We had a lot of activity on social media, where people could send in messages of support if they couldn’t come to the strike. Reading the crowd, you could see people were excited and inspired. You get that in the air when you see 8,000 people feeling hopeful about something. We got feedback that people had a good time, felt better about climate change and wanted to keep supporting the movement.
I think it went amazingly. The march almost went too well because there were no real hiccups. All the speakers were amazing; the crowd was fine to control. I don’t think Christchurch had seen a march in a very long time, especially on that scale. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. It really went exactly as we had all envisioned it.
A lot of us are people you wouldn’t usually pick as leaders, or as people to be super involved in activism, I guess. Well, not activism but your typical leadership groups. After that strike, I saw a lot of the kids in the group step into their roles a bit more. I think they gained a real sense of confidence from seeing the actual outcome of what they’d achieved. When you are doing climate activism and environmentalism, especially around climate change, it can be really difficult to see your progress because it’s a global issue, it’s massive. It’s not just going to be solved. We can’t just go, “We’ll work for a year and it will be solved.”. You don’t see instant progress.
Personally, I don’t want to say I didn’t need a confidence boost, but I think it was more important for me to see the actual progress rather than feel like I was capable. I feel a lot of the younger people hadn’t been involved in a big event like that before and they hadn’t spoken to press or been in a group and gone to meetings. They saw it and they were like, “I can do this”, especially the kids who were only just involved for that strike and they’ve stayed on.”
Approach 3 – Building Ownership and Empowerment
Weaving with the two key outcomes
Developing the whole person
The young people came to be involved in this project from their sense of caring about the environment and about others. Their involvement in this project led to increased competence, and the development of skills increased their confidence and sense of achievement. This in turn led to a stronger connection to the project, and they have stayed involved long- term. All of these have led to a positive contribution to themselves and to their community.
Developing connected communities
This project was about a long term commitment to whenua and climate change action. There was a local event that connected to a national event, and there were a range of ages of young people involved leading this project, with the support of some parents. There was communication by the young person with schools, and a desire to include as many people as possible to create a sense of hope.
Relevance for funders/policy makers
Projects that set out to achieve goals around ownership and empowerment should also consider how the project is (or can) contribute to the two key outcomes (developing the whole person and developing connected communities). It is important to link the immediate need to the bigger picture.
