Badlaav 2009-Be the Change!
Badlaav 2009 – Be the Change! was a youth summit on climate change organized by the Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) from July 18 to July 23, 2009 in New Delhi, India. Held at the American Embassy School in Chanakyapuri, approximately 200 individuals from across India attended Badlaav through the 6 day youth summit. The major components of the summit included morning plenary sessions, knowledge and skills based workshops, creative workshops and lots of other fun activities.
Each day began with a morning plenary session where individuals engaged in climate change and other social justice action spoke with the participants, inspiring them and telling their own stories.
Throughout each of the days, many knowledge based workshop sessions were held to provide participants with knowledge that that would be useful to them in their organizing action on climate change. More often then not the knowledge based workshops were linked to MDG’s to make it more relevant for the Indian context in terms of how India would be impact in all areas of social justice and development. Given the nature of Badlaav 2009’s agenda (concurrent sessions), the participation levels varied for the knowledge based workshop sessions. On the whole, the participants indicated that they found these sessions informative and useful.
Throughout each of the days, many skills based workshop sessions were held to provide participants with the skills that would be useful to them in their organizing action on climate change. Both knowledge and skills based workshops were run by members of IYCN and other NGO’s either working on climate change, with youth or on other social issues (associated with MDGs).
Throughout each of the days, many creative skills were held to provide participants with an opportunity to connect climate change with creativity. These included the community radio workshops; street theatre workshops etc.
The schedule for Badlaav 2009 was varied to ensure that participants, especially those who had travelled to attend, would feel inspired and have great fun while thinking about and talking about climate change. Hence there were additional components including a play, skits, a cultural night, a climate flash dance, film screenings etc.