On March 8, 2021, the POP Movement organized a workshop on Climate Action at Space Arts Platform with Idea Planeta. The aim of the workshop was to share knowledge and build capacities for climate action. The workshop witnessed the participation of 12 young scholarship winners, including a young leader from POP Germany. These participants were from Germany, Austria, and Mexico.

“We have a small window of opportunity during which we can make a difference to the issue of climate change. And we do have the ability to do that.” – Dr. Ash Pachauri, Senior Mentor, POP Movement

The first hour of the workshop started with an interactive presentation made by Dr. Ash Pachauri, Senior Mentor of the POP Movement titled, “What is climate change to why climate action is key”. He engaged the audience by asking questions to generate thinking, to make them understand how the climate is exponentially changing due to anthropogenic activities and what is the factor causing it. This was followed by a number of presentations made to showcase youth climate action initiated around the world by the youth from the POP, covering a wide range of issues. They included the Color Book by Ana Hanhausen, Art with recycled material by Komal Mittal, Reciclarate by Irene Martinez, Ervis Foundation’s Blue Circle Initiative by Priyanka, and Hotel para abejas I’inaj or the Bee Hotel by Ana Poot.

“Everything is interconnected and it affects every aspect of our lives.”- Edgar, Mexico

The second hour of the workshop was a capacity-building exercise where the participants were distributed among two groups: Team Blue and Green with 6 participants in each group. This was a Divergent and Convergent thinking exercise, to create new ideas that are sustainable and eco-friendly and develop an understanding of how to make correct use of them. This task was to be performed as an individual as well as a team, where the participants had to turn out an idea using materials from a set of pre-assigned list of products.

The participants enjoyed the activity and participated with full enthusiasm. They came up with some amazing ideas to create products like a pincushion, psychedelic shirt, backpack, herbarium, kids playground, pan flute, pen holder, tripod stand, and biogas plant using products like a t-shirt, plastic bottles, paper bucket, plastic straws, and other such materials. This was followed by a concluding session with the key takeaways from the session provided by Dr. Ash Pachauri, Dra. Norma Patricia from the POP Movement and Eleonora from Cinema Planeta.