Copenhagen hosted over 90 climate events and activities from the 9th to the 12th of October for the C40 World Mayors Summit 2019. YCL's CEO, Cassia Moraes, was invited as one of the speakers of the Summit. YCL leveraged this access for a delegation of our #YCLnetwork members to participate in the event as well. See below some daily highlights from this important global event for the #SDG and #climate agenda.
DAY #1 - 09 October
The event kickoff featured keynote speeches from Anne Hidalgo (Mayor of Paris), Mike Bloomberg (ex-mayor of New York City), Michael Mueller (Mayor of Berlin), and Frank Jensen (Mayor of Copenhagen). They also presented the program #womenforclimate and featured the 20 female mayors within C40's 90 participating cities. YCL is eager and inspired to support increasing this number! We also encourage cities to elect more young mayors and for city governments to staff more youth!
DAY #2 - 10 October
What an amazing day! We are proud to have five members of the YCL Network attending the event. We were also featured in the official plenary - Cassia Moraes talked about what YCL demands from politicians and what are her dreams for the future of her city, São Paulo. Fellow Panelists included the Minister of National Development of Singapore, the Mayor of Boston, and Sheela Patel (Founder of SPARC). YCL is teaming up with local governments to promote climate action and create new professional opportunities for youth, subscribe to our newsletter and stay tuned!
During the event, Al Gore spoke just after Cassia, so they had a chance to have a quick catch up in the backstage! The Climate Reality Project Brasil is an official partner of #YouthClimateLeaders, together with Centro Brasil no Clima, a Think Tank led by Alfredo Sirkis, to implement multi-level climate change action in #Brazil.
We also had the pleasure of meeting U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Christiansborg Palace. The young congresswoman is pushing for a #greennewdeal in the #USA and beyond. YCL is eager to be a part of a global movement to inspire and engage everyone on collectively evolving the many pathways to realize a new climate economy!
See Cassia's speech below:
Day #3 - 11 October
To say a proper farewell to Copenhagen, we were invited by GreenKayak to a tour in the canals of the city to collect trash. GreenKayak is an environmental NGO that empowers volunteers to act on environmental pollution while kayaking. You can paddle the GreenKayaks for free under two conditions: You spend your time on the water collecting waste and share this experience on your social media using #GreenKayak.
GreenKayak was able to collect 91 kg of trash over the course of the Summit... YCL'ers alone collected 7.1kg (a weekly record)! The activity was part of the Live Like Tomorrow Festival along with Mayors, activists, and many volunteers.
