Greenpeace youth

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The Greenpeace youth at the 31st Catholic World Youth Day in Krakow. In kayaks, she and other activists recall the Pope's criticism of the high share of the industrialized nations in climate change.

The Greenpeace Youth has been an offer by Greenpeace Germany since 1997 for young people aged 14 and 19 who want to volunteer for environmental protection . Over 800 young people are active in around 50 cities with the Greenpeace Youth and their actions are aimed at the public and politics. The main topics are the same as those of Greenpeace Germany and Greenpeace International. The young people form so-called youth action groups, JAG for short, and are linked to the local Greenpeace groups in their city. There they are supported in their projects and activities by appropriately trained adult group members. The young people are therefore part of Greenpeace and always work on a voluntary basis . Children between the ages of 9 and 14 can form a so-called green team. These teams are also supported by Greenpeace.

activities

The youth groups usually meet regularly and plan joint activities on site. These are always registered, thematically appropriate to the nationwide campaigns and often colorful and creative. For example, the young people organize street theater, flash mobs and information stands, collect signatures or take part in demonstrations. In addition to the local youth campaigns, there are also regional and nationwide activities and meetings that the young people help to plan and organize and where the young people network with one another and organize larger events together.

GenetiXproject

The first nationwide youth campaign was the GenetiXproject: After protests by young people, the Nestlé Group withdrew the genetically modified Butterfinger chocolate bar from the market in 1999 .

Solar generation

The SolarGeneration project, a campaign for renewable energies and climate protection, began in July 2003 . In August 2003 young people presented the then Federal Labor Minister Wolfgang Clement with their political demands for new jobs in the field of renewable energies. They also took part in youth campaigns at the World Summit for Renewable Energies in Bonn in June 2004, and the following year they emphasized their demands at the UN climate conference in Montreal. In May 2007, 50 members of the Greenpeace Youth Working Group set up a climate camp at the Reichstag and spoke to members of the German Bundestag about climate protection measures.

"Primeval forest protection is climate protection"

In the first half of 2008, the young people worked together with the green teams to support the jungle . The highlight was the Kids for Earth demo for the UN biodiversity conference in Bonn with 500 children and young people.

Traffic campaign

In September 2008 a youth traffic campaign started. They called for much more climate-friendly car traffic in Germany. The German cars are too "fat", according to the young people, alluding to the heavy weight of the cars and thus also to the high CO 2 emissions . In order to show that many young people are demanding lighter and more climate-friendly cars, photo shoots were carried out nationwide.

Kitkat campaign

At the beginning of 2010, the Greenpeace youth began a campaign against the use of Paml oil from Indonesian rainforests in Nestlé's Kitkat chocolate bars. To this end, many signatures were collected at the Ecumenical Church Congress in Munich. With almost a quarter of a million petitioners, Greenpeace managed to get Nestlé to give in and promised to stop using palm oil in chocolate bars in the future.

Save the Arctic

Since the beginning of 2012, the protection of the Arctic has been a topic of the youth groups. Time and again they called for the preservation of the Arctic as a unique ecosystem and the withdrawal of large oil companies such as Shell and Gazprom from the Arctic by collecting signatures and other actions. Thanks to nationwide, international and local support, over 7 million signatures have already been collected (as of August 2015) that are supposed to put pressure on the politicians responsible.

Detox our fashion

“Detox our Fashion” is another campaign slogan of the Greenpeace youth. In this campaign, Greenpeace calls for no toxic dyes or softeners in clothing, which are harmful to the health of the wearer and represent an extreme burden for the environment. The Greenpeace youth draws attention to this topic through local street theater or clothing swap campaigns and informs passers-by on the street about possible risks and dangers. Large clothing companies such as ADIDAS have already given in and committed to non-toxic clothing production.

Coal campaign

Since the beginning of 2014, lignite has been the theme of the Greenpeace youth campaign. Under the motto “Coal is no reason to dig into it!” They are organizing various campaigns across Germany as well as multiple demonstrations in Lusatia to prevent the opening of new lignite opencast mines. The largest demonstration was the 8-kilometer human chain at the end of August 2014 across the German-Polish border . This should draw attention to the demolition of the local villages as well as the environmentally harmful consequences of opencast mining, which are already present in Lusatia.

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