This Friday, August 12, 2022, is International Youth Day. An opportunity for us to celebrate the essential role of young people in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and accelerating the ecological transition!
Gabrielle Lévy (22 years old) is responsible for pedagogical awareness-raising within Energy Observer Foundation. Today, she is the ambassador of a voice too often instrumentalized.
Focus area
3 Promote the 17 SDGs
Climate march in Paris, 2022 © Energy Observer Productions | Mélanie de Groot
Today, 1.2 billion people are between 15 and 24 years old. That accounts for 16% of the world's population. Constantly growing[1], youth often act on the margins of political, economic, and social opportunities and are out of step with public action. Young people often declare themselves wrongly represented by the political class.
Others firmly commit to parties, associations, or NGOs in climate activism that does not go unnoticed. Some speak out publicly on visible and mediatized occasions, such as during several high school graduation ceremonies last spring.
The slogan #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs expresses a part of the youth's expectations to benefit from progressive opportunities and to act in the service of society and the planet. Used by many committed young people, activists, or militants, it expresses the idea that no policy should run without the direct participation of the concerned people.
Sometimes presented as idealists, not very pragmatic, and unable to understand the realities of the world, youth perceive themselves as having been reduced to a caricature, without impact or role in society. However, young people are essential actors of change; their ideals, energy, and will to change are all indispensable elements to the world around them.
If young people are undeniably a powerful source for development, they must hold the knowledge and skills to inform themselves, train themselves, and serve their country and the climate cause. However, there are still glaring disparities across the world today in one's education and among the opportunities offered to youth. It is therefore essential that everyone can benefit, in an equitable manner, from an education that allows everyone to contribute fully to a more sustainable and just world.
This International Youth Day is an opportunity to recall the role of young women and men as agents of change and to highlight the difficulties they face along the way.
School visit on board Energy Observer in Koh Samui, Thailand © Energy Observer Productions | Agathe Roullin
Learn, understand, transmit, exchange, share: such is the ambition of Energy Observer Foundation, which brings a large public to be aware of the environmental challenges of our time.
On board Energy Observer's laboratory vessel or within our educational exhibition system deployed during some of the international and French stopovers, we aim to offer young people the opportunity to discuss the ecological transition, its challenges, and the role of hydrogen in accelerating the energy transition, with the crew and the teams ashore.
School visit on board Energy Observer in Koh Samui, Thailand © Energy Observer Productions | Agathe Roullin
Inspire, convey the desire to be involved, to have an impact, and open perspectives on future jobs. That is Energy Observer Foundation's most important mission: to offer youth the keys to understanding to design desirable futures by being in contact with a team that develops innovative and sustainable solutions. This action seems essential for young people's growth to allow them to understand, share, and raise awareness, to act and move the lines today and tomorrow.
School visit on board Energy Observer in Bali, Indonesia © Energy Observer Productions | Mélanie de Groot
[1] The United Nations predicts that the number of young people aged 15 to 24 will increase by 7% by 2030.
All over the world, women and men are devoting their time and energy to the creation of sustainable solutions for a more harmonious world. Energy Observer is heading off in search of them in a bid to promote their ideas and actions.