Youth climate leaders launch a new media initiative to put Survival front & center on international stage, pressure delegates in Copenhagen
San Francisco, CA.— On August 11, hundreds of youth climate activists, supporters, artists, and community members gathered at Minna Gallery to launch a global network of youth journalists who will use video, photography, and blogs to report from the front lines of the climate crisis in the lead up to the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.
The new media project is called Project Survival Media, and its goals are ambitious: Launch seven youth-directed new media teams, one from each continent; Report on compelling and under-told climate change stories; Leverage this media using the vast organizing and distribution networks that youth have built to spread their message; and Influence the international dialogue in the lead up to the UN Climate Negotiations.
“What if, on all seven continents, there were young people equipped to globally broadcast pivotal stories about the climate crisis?” says youth organizer and Project Coordinator Shadia Fayne Wood.
“What if these young people were empowered to amplify disenfranchised voices and propel the principle of “Survival” to the forefront of the political debate? Climate change is not a future threat – people all over the planet are suffering from different effects of climate change right now, and they don’t have time to wait until a solution becomes politically feasible.” Ms. Wood also pointed out that there is a real need to breathe life into the statistics of the climate crisis, and that new media has the potential to do just that.
The 1.5 minute you-tube video that accompanies the project launch:
Antonia Juhasz, Director of the Chevron Program at Global Exchange, and Adrienne Maree Brown of the Ruckus Society spoke before the project announcement. “For the first time in history, seven out of ten of the largest corporations in the world are oil companies,” said Ms. Juhasz. “They are the wealthiest industry on the planet and the wealthiest industry the world has ever known. They are using their money to try to dominate the political debate on climate change at great peril to us all. But we can change this debate and our youth can lead the way. Youth on the front lines, with the energy and skills to reveal the true cost of climate devastation and breadth of the resistance to it, can change the global conversation and the course of history.”
As a part of the International Youth Delegation (IYD) to the negotiations, Project Survival Media will use new media tactics and tools to support policies that “safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples.” This message will be driven home by spotlighting communities disproportionately impacted by climate change: youth, women, people of color, and indigenous peoples.
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Project Coordinator Shadia Wood has experience managing media teams for events like Power Shift 09, an historic gathering of 12,000 young people on Climate Change, Power Shift 07, and COP 14 in Poznan, Poland in 2008. Her work with the Energy Action Coalition was presented in the 2007 Green Issue of Vanity Fair and was also a recipient of Elle Magazine’s 2008 Green Awards.
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Project Survival Media is a global network of youth journalists reporting from the frontlines of the climate crisis in the lead up to COP 15. Our seven new media teams, one for each continent, will report on the most compelling climate stories from around the world, amplify voices underrepresented by traditional media, and launch “Survival” to the forefront of the political debate. Project Survival Media is the 2009 international new media project of Fired Up Media, a project of the Earth Island Institute.
