Line-up for Youth Climate Summit announced

Environmental charity Global Action Plan has announced the final line up for the Youth Climate Summit 2020, taking place from 9 November for one week. Britain’s Got Talent stars SOS for the Kids choir, the University of Oxford, WWF-UK, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and LEGO are among the organisations coming together for the event.

The Summit is happening online on the Transform Our World teacher resource hub and will see UK schools unite to learn and make pledges for the planet, during the week when world leaders should have been meeting for the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Schools will be making pledges every day throughout the summit, with one of the main Summit calls to action for schools to join the Let’s Go Zero campaign, which unites schools working to become zero carbon by 2030 and calls for government backing for zero carbon schools.

Primary and secondary schools all over the UK can choose from over 150 free online sessions, as well as inspiration sessions, fun at home activities and evening film viewings. There are inspiring green careers talks with representatives from Tesco, LEGO and WWF-UK.

The Summit will close on Friday 13th November when young people will summarise and present the pledges made during the week to an expert panel, which includes UK High Level Climate Action Champion, Nigel Topping, Science communicator and broadcaster Dr Emily Grossman, Senior Vice President of the National Education Union (NEU), Daniel Kebede and Mya Rose-Craig aka Bird girl, ornithologist and campaigner.

Ahead of the event, thirty Youth Climate Summit Ambassadors from across the UK have been reaching out to celebrities, including writing an open letter to Sir David Attenborough asking him to support the Summit. One ambassador also interviewed the nature writer and forester Peter Wohlleben, writer of The Hidden Life of Trees.  

The Transform Our World teacher resource hub, co-ordinated by Global Action Plan, is funded through the #iwill Fund, which is made possible thanks to a £50 million joint investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to support young people to access high quality social action opportunities, such as volunteering and campaigning, around the issues that matter to them.  

Schools can book sessions now here.