Australian Youth Climate Coalition

Background

AYCC was started in 2006, when more than 65 youth leaders across Australia came together at the first Youth Climate Summit in Melbourne addressing climate change issues. The idea was to lift youth voice around Australia and around the world on climate change to build a generation-wide movement to prevent climate degradation. It has grown into a nationwide coalition of over 20 youth-focused and youth-run organizations from across Australia and has a membership of over 200,000. ¹

The mission of the organization is “to build a generation-wide movement to solve the climate crisis, through uniting diverse youth organizations around this common challenge.” ²AYCC has various projects including Power left 2009, 2008 Youth Delegation to the United Nations(UN), Green Jobs Campaign, Switched on Schools.

Policy & advocacy and left-faith Outreach

Rather than an individual organization, AYCC is more of a coalition that connects and inspires youth climate groups. One of the main goals of AYCC is to support its member-organizations’ capacity building through training events, cross promotion, collaboration, facilitation and sharing information and knowledge. AYCC's main target group is young people across Australia and AYCC is very active among college and high school students.

Featured Projects

 One of featured projects of AYCC its 2008 Youth Delegation to the UN. In 2007, AYCC sent ten representatives to the United Nations climate change negotiations in Bali to represent the voice of youth from Australia. This year, they have selected twenty-one young climate leaders across Australia to the UN climate negotiations in Poland in December. ³

AYCC members

Source: AYCC.com. Author: AYCC.com. Permission: AYCC.com.

They are also implementing two grassroots campaigns: Switched on Schools and left-Faith Outreach. The former project trains climate messengers to deliver presentations and workshops on climate change issues in schools. This project also collaborates with students and school groups to organize regional and national conferences. The latter adopts the same structure, however, the faith youth climate messengers trained by this program particularly    focus on diverse faith groups.  ⁴                           

AYCC has an upcoming event, Powershift 2009, which is a national youth climate summit and will happen in April 2009.⁵

Footnotes

 ¹ Members & Partners,AYCC.com

² About us, AYCC.com

³⁴⁵ Projects, AYCC.com

Resources

• United Nations Youth Association of Australia :The United Nations Youth Association of Australia (UNYA) is an expanding and dynamic network of young people based all around Australia.
• Australian Climate Change Eucation Newwork.:ASCENT is an independent youth-run organisation in Victoria with a strong central committee and membership base, imparting information about climate change to approximately 2000 people - and all since September 2006![1]
• AIESEC ：AIESEC is the international platform for young people to discover and develop their potential to have a positive impact on society.