A Campaign for the planet, by its future dwellers

We at Save the Children commit to children and their future where we consider climate issues to be a children and youth issue that is reflected strongly in our global flagship campaign aptly titled 'Generation Hope'. This is a unique five-year-long campaign launched in 2022, which envisions a world that cares for the future generation and their planet by addressing a broken system. At the heart of the campaign lies the voices of children and youth who have been engaged from the design to the execution of this crucial campaign and all its activities. This aligns wholeheartedly with our country's goals as well as where child and youth engagement is one of our key priorities.

The five key principles of the Generation Hope Campaign are amplifying children's voices; urgent optimism for the future for how children and youth can participate in helping climate change; compassion, not cynicism; and taking children and youth voices seriously by giving them a 'seat' at the table.

Before its official launch, Save the Children held Child Hearing - the largest-ever consultations with children on climate issues, involving 54,500 children from 41 countries across the globe where we heard directly from children and youth about the way climate change is affecting their lives and the world around them. In Bangladesh, we spoke to 5000+ children across the country, mainly in climate-vulnerable parts.

These hearings fed into a global report published by Save the Children which establishes, contrary to the common beliefs of policymakers and business leaders, climate crisis is not a future problem, but is a global emergency today for the world's 2.4 billion children.

Following the hearings, we had another engaging activity called Climate Canvas, where a local artist guided children to paint on a giant canvas depicting climate issues. This canvas was joined with canvases from other countries where children also took part and was displayed as the longest canvas outside of the G20 summit in Indonesia last year by Save the Children, it took the thoughts and expressions of our children to the global stage.

We began this year with the official country launch of 'Generation Hope' which was virtually attended by UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change, Ian Fry, and a child as the chief guest. This year's further activities of the campaign have included an advocacy, campaign, communication, and media capacity training workshop for young climate activists.Renowned experts in the country conducted the sessions.

This was also done after consulting with our young minds who are now entwined with our campaign. We also held a very successful media roundtable in collaboration with The Daily Star prior to COP28 with the young climate activists and seniors in the climate space which included policymakers, CSO practitioners, climate experts, and journalists.

This magazine is Save the Children in Bangladesh's latest voyage into enhancing children's and youth voices on climate by creating more spaces for them to share their stories on climate issues and we hope to continue to publish more of these in the future.

As the Generation Hope campaign progresses, we at Save the Children hope to engage more and more children and youth, with immediate plans for a joint children platform to be launched next year, an idea Dr. Saleemul Huq had laid down earlier in the year.

Sheemtana Shameem is the Director of Advocacy, Campaign, Communication and Media at Save the Children in Bangladesh.