Nasser youth alumni attends COY17 and COP27

About 

Ms. Mokgothadi Emily Mogano, a South African social entrepreneur participated in the 17th UN Climate Change Conference of Youth (COY17) where thousands of young change makers from more than 140 countries gathered with one main goal: saving the earth. Emily Mogano represented her non-profit organization "Pad Your Future" that works on promoting the United Nations Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, especially rural disadvantaged girls by providing skills development workshops and mental, hygiene, health, and climate change.

COY17 represented the most significant youth conferences as endorsed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the presidency of the Conference of Parties (COP27) where young people around the world who are actively engaged in the effort to address climate change, leading and participating in multitude of initiatives at the local, sub-national, national and international levels. 

Between representing my organization which educates and empowers youth with valuable knowledge so that they are able to create innovative solutions within their communities and the UN Sustainable Goal Five, I am proud to have contributed to dialogues and panels across various issues that are integrated into wider socio-economic development and industrial policy planning in a climate changed world. I also had the privilege to contribute to the African Youth Declaration for Climate Mobility led by the UN Climate Change youth constituency (YOUNGO).

As a delegate we were given the opportunity to express our needs on what our individual countries need to facilitate adaptation, mitigation, loss, and finance for climate change. Through building capacity workshops, I managed to build connections that will lead to future collaborations with other youth led organizations that were participating in the COY17. One of the workshops I attended was on Climate adaptation and we asked ourselves how do we prepare our communities for the impacts of climate change we know are coming? We need to adapt our communities and build resilience and my goal is to create more campaigns within my non-profit organization to educate the youth with Youth Engagement with Global goal on adaptation.

The most substantial output of COY17 is the policy document, the Global Youth Statement, a comprehensive text providing youth input to world leaders on the steps they believe they should be taken to advance. The failure of governments to follow through with commitments and society's solid approach to tackling crisis only strengthens the need for a more intergenerational and intersectional approach to seeking solutions. I also had the privilege to contribute to the African Youth Declaration for Climate Mobility lead by the UN Climate Change youth constituency (YOUNGO).

I believe with further development of shared strategies we can create impactful youth statements of international youth policy demands with inputs from LCOYs, RCOYs or other climate change preparations

We need to acknowledge that youth leaders play a big role in community development and if many leaders are trained and mentored, it will strengthen the desire to implement campaigns, innovative projects regarding climate change and this will pave a way to higher decision making capturing greater economic value through green industrial policy. The path to climate neutrality is no good if it will further cost the earth and render marginalized communities more so in the process.

"Young people are the Plan A and only plan in this difficult moment and their voices are needed to fight against backsliding, delay or deprioritization of climate action" said Amb, Wael Aboulmag COP27 President Special Representative.

I am more motivated than ever to work and engage in youth campaigns in my region and globally. My appreciation goes to YOUNGO for the opportunity to represent my country as a delegate and to add my contribution to tackling climate change to develop something bigger. We need collaboration, accountability, action, accurate reporting, and audit of carbon footprint at individual company, community, country, and global level.