Credit: Young Friends of the Earth Scotland
Reporter
Young people as young as 14 years old are able to sign up for the free online workshops.
Grassroots network Young Friends of the Earth Scotland will host a series of online workshops from 13 to 26 April to share and discuss activism skills and strategies during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The organisation, led by young climate and social justice activists aged 16 to 30 years old from all over Scotland, has come up with the Online Youth Skillshare programme after the nation-wide lockdown forced them to revise their previous plans.
“After our planned 2020 skillshare event was cancelled due to coronavirus, we realised it was actually more important than ever to keep creating spaces for us to come together, support each other and learn from each other. We worked hard to move our entire event online and make the sessions as useful as possible to the current context,” said Catrina Randall, the YFoES network coordinator.
The workshops are open to young people, aged up to 30 years old, with an interest in social and climate justice. In order to reach a wider audience, the minimum age threshold to join the session is 14 rather than 16 years old. The events are run also by young activists and are subject to a safer space policy to ensure an inclusive and mutually supportive environment.
Some of the scheduled events explicitly refer to the challenge of carrying out collective action in isolation, while other sessions will touch upon more general topics, such as community building, climate justice or fossil fuel divestment. Participants will have the opportunity to enact the acquired skills through a zine-making workshop and a final session in which an action will be collectively planned and carried out online.
The workshop on Covid-19’s impact on student campaigning, planned for Saturday 18 April at 2pm, will be of particular interest to university students.
“I organised my skillshare workshop because it is vital that we discuss, and push back against universities’ responses to the virus in these past few weeks, as they are employers and landlords to hundreds of thousands of people, and they often prioritise profit over the wellbeing of their staff and students, especially those on visas or casualised contracts,” said Francis, the activist who will facilitate the event.
The Online Youth Skillshare programme can be found on the Facebook event page. Most workshops require booking in advance, but all are free to attend. Further information is available on Young Friends of the Earth Scotland’s website and social media.
