The 2nd Day of COY17: How One Session, Climate Fresk, took up my whole day during COY17 in Egypt!

This is the fourth article in the COP27 and COY17 series, and I promise I will finish them all! You can read everything I have experienced and written about COP27 and COY17 here.

The truth is I could have written about everything as it happened, but I was too occupied with survival needs that I never got time to really do COP27 and COY17 documentation as I wished.

My life during COP27 and COY17 was full of many uncertainities and struggles, and it was a little tricky to keep up with the pace. However, for sessions, I tried. For documentation (specifically, writing these blog posts), yeah, I surely got no time!

I hope I will find a sponsor for my second COP and COY (or COP28 and COY18, already scheduled on 30/11/2023 to 12/12/2023, UAE) participation and thus get the luxury of dedicating all my life to learning and teaching during the conferences!

Wait! Do you wanna sponsor my next COP or do you know someone who could? Please, I am all ears! Hit my inbox at nemvicx@gmail.com or WhatsApp +256779342057.

Anyway, away from my lamentations, in this short article, I will share what I experienced during the second day of COY17, the youth-led and youth-focused conference that happened prior to the major conference of parties (COP27).

My goal for COP27 and COY17 series is to bring these conferences closer to everyone, especially fellow youth who couldn’t make it to Egypt or even don’t know anything about these things. I wanna inspire you to take up your oar or paddle and sail with me for a sustainable future. Hallelujah!

Wait! How about setting yourself up for COP28? Join our WhatsApp Group and keep tabs on everything sustainable and climate change!

The second day of COY17: The Climate Fresk!

You will not believe it, but, yeah, for me, the whole of the second day of COY17 was about Climate Fresk! Can you imagine that? As we already noted, about 36 sessions happened within the only 3 days of COY17, an average of 12 sessions per day.

GET THIS: The full list of all the 36 sessions during COY17

And yet, of all the 12 sessions, I attended one; climate fresk! Why? What is climate fresk anyway? Let’s get into it!

As always, the day opened up with us taking the good breakfast that was being offered at the hosting hotel, Tulip Inn Hotel. After breakfast, we moved out of the rooms to the conference center, just the backyard of the hotel.

With me was Caroline and Richard, the two buddies from Uganda. I will come back to these friends among others later! Of course, I took a selfie as I rushed myself to one of the sessions’ buildings!

When I stepped into the sessions’ building, I peeped into what was happening in all the available rooms, and my eyes singled out climate fresk! Even from far, it looked fun, and yet deep! And, yeah, I love learning. But wait! What is Climate Fresk?

Climate Fresk is a climate education game of cards, whereby players are required to arrange cards bearing climate related concepts (including causes, effects, impacts, catastrophes, etc) in their order of occurance or at least in a rational order. By the end of the game, players (or learners) have grasped climate related knowledge that is deep, rational, and yet easily! In their words, the founders of the game define it as follows:

“In order to take action and build solutions, we first need to understand the problem. Climate Fresk is the most powerful tool for providing a quality climate education that is accessible to anyone and can be scaled quickly within an organisation or community.” See Climate Fresk website for more.

My first 3 hours doing climate fresk

Basically, the whole exercise takes approximately 3 hours. So, I dedicated my 3 hours of the second COY17 day to Climate Fresk, playing, learning, networking!

The coach was an amazing young lady (I don’t remember her name). But I have a selfie with her. Yeah! She was kind, tolerant, allowing all of us a chance to participate, and, yeah, she was knowledgeable. And flexible too, listening and considering learners’ reasons for various cards arrangement options.

From the basic and clear causes of climate change to deeper scientifically proven ones, we explored everything. We examined causes, serious causes, immediate effects, long term impacts, greenhouse gases, absorbers of greenhouse gases, emitters, etc. Did you know that agricuture is responsible for about 80% of deforestation? Did you know that rising temperatures lead to rising oceans not necessarily through melting ice but molecule expansion? Lol!

In this session, I met young people with deep environment science knowledge, oh My God! I learnt a lot! The session ended around 1pm or towards 2pm.

And then they announced they would host another one in the afternoon, this time (or that time) for those who wanna upgrade from being players and learners to facilitators!

Well, I couldn’t miss it!

Given the fact that my passions and work at #MiklahLife are about training and empowering entrepreneurs in sustainable development, I knew this was my chance to become a facilitator and even get the whole fresk thing and incorporate it into our #SacredEntrepreneurship trainings at Miklah Life. So, I decided to do Climate Fresk in the afternoon as well; more 3 hours for climate fresk!

The last 3 hours of climate fresk on seconday of COY17!

Well, in the afternoon, we joined. And we did all the necessary trainings and practices. I learned from fellow particpants that there are ways to present complex things easily and with fun!

Yeah, of course, we took photos. And, yeah, I took a selfie with the coach as well. This time I noted her name, and we became friends.

Katharina Haas is from Austria, and she is one of the amazing persons I met during COY17. She is sensitive to learners’ needs, fun to work around, knowledgeable, social, and, yeah, resourceful and helpful. She inspired me to love climate fresk and passionately make it a point to incorporate it in Miklah’s environment training programs.

Katharina was helpful in a way that we kept in touch throughout COPY17 and COP27 to the point she almost made it possible for me to come back home with Climate Fresk physical cards. It is just that ENGLISH version cards were over by the time I went to pick them! But her trying and communications regarding that were immense! And I appreciate her.

And that marked the end of Day 2 of COY17. For me, It was all about climate fresk. And I am glad I did give it my six or seven hours. Now, Climate Fresk is part of #Miklah and we will soon have our learners get introduced to it! Yes, that was something!

READ THIS: The 3rd day of COY17: How ShareLand, Miklah’s initiative won Arab Youth Center Pitches Award.

That was all.