YOUth LEADing the World

Youth Leading the World (YLTW) is a transformative sustainability leadership program that enables young people to find their voice and become active participants in creating fairer futures. 

Imagine young people coming together across the planet, to learn about global sustainability challenges such as energy, food, climate change, biodiversity and water and plan together how they can lead positive social change. 

YLTW is an award-winning, highly participatory program that equips young people with solution-focused tools to tackle sustainability challenges, generate a vision and innovate action plans.

OzGREEN trains local people to run YLTW in their own region, creating pathways for rapid, far-reaching change.

This annual program of activities begins with an energising 3-day youth leadership congress conducted simultaneously in multiple interconnected locations.

Through YLTW, young people become:

"YLTW changed my life and enabled me to find a way to contribute to transforming our community."

- Diptesh Pandey Varanasi India.

1 : Facilitator Training

.

OzGreen trains local people to run YLTW in their own region.

To date, we have trained over 1,000 Facilitators globally.

We train teams of participants from communities around Australia and the world to become YLTW Facilitators and join the OzGREEN team. Real-time live online training is an option that makes YLTW accessible even to remote communities. 

YLTW Facilitator training is highly participatory, giving local people the tools and confidence to run YLTW in their own region. To date, we have trained over 970 Facilitators. Through YLTW we open share the skills and experience OzGREEN has gained over 25 years of delivering recognised excellence in transformative sustainability leadership and social innovation for community driven change.

This two-day training can be attended in person, or live-online for interstate and international participants, making YLTW accessible to international and remote communities. The course teaches all the skills and techniques to prepare people for organising a congress.

YLTW Facilitator Training strengthens capacity, sustainability, resilience and vibrancy of regional communities. YLTW gives people solution-focused tools to tackle sustainability challenges, generate a vision and innovate action plans.

Key focal areas in the training include:

• Global sustainability challenges;
• Eco-footprint;
• Participatory leadership;
• Strategic Questioning and deep listening;
• Visioning; and
• VIBRANT goals and action planning.

"For me as a YLTW facilitator it's knowing I've changed people. It's been life-changing, eye opening & changed the way I look at everything."

- Chris Rowlands, Victoria

2 - Congress

..

OzGREEN supports these teams to organise and facilitate empowering youth leadership and sustainability 'Youth Leading the World' congresses around the world.

Once the training is complete, Facilitators organise and promote their own local YLTW Congress to attract youth aged 12-25 years. These congresses are run over three days and OzGREEN is available to support you as much or as little you choose.

Congresses:

• Promote an understanding of climate change and sustainability;
• Develop motivation, confidence and community leadership;
• Support local partnerships among council, schools and local business; and
• Foster connections with change-makers locally and globally.

3 - Action Plans 

.

Youth implement Local Action Plans designed during YLTW congress 

Local YLTW Facilitators provide regular support through ongoing mentoring as youth implement their action plans.

Past youth actions plans include: 

• Clean-up campaign for stormwater and litter in Phnom Penh
• Community festival to raise awareness about river health
• Keep cup to raise funds for biodiversity project and reduce community waste
• Campaigning to get school to go solar – getting staff, student
  body, school council on board
• Establishing school environment club, installing veggie gardens
• Organising YLTW in their own region; training as a YLTW Facilitator
• Standing for election to local government, to gain greater influence at a policy level
• Campaign to ban single use plastics in their school

YLTW Impact

Participants say the most significant outcomes are greatly increased:

• Understanding of climate change and sustainability (increase from 40% to 90%).
• Motivation, personal confidence and leadership capacity to tackle sustainability challenges locally and globally (increase from 30% to 80%)
• Connectedness - sense of being part of an active community of youth change-makers working locally and globally (increase from 20% to 90%).

"I wanted to thank you for this super empowering program that I feel has the potential to shift the entire world for the young & future generations to come."

- Stephie Seika Sanada, California

YLTW in 2019 

In 2019 YLTW Congresses will run throughout the year, with globally connected celebration and impact reporting events at the end of the year. We are also planning for two ambitious whole river basin programs in the Murray-Darling River Basin in Australia and the Ganges River Basin in South Asia.

In 2019 YLTW Facilitator Trainings will be conducted in 4 global time zones in 2019, including Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. 

Partner organisations are the key to the success of YLTW

To date OzGREEN has established mutually beneficial partnerships with over 200 organisations, including businesses, government, schools, universities, foundations and NGOs. Partners can contribute financial support and in-kind contributions such as venue, facilitators, local coordination and mentoring as young people implement their action plans. For more information about YLTW partnerships, please contact slennox@ozgreen.org.au.