Revisiting Crowd4SDG #LearningPlanet Festival

As part of the #LearningPlanet Festival, the European research project, Crowd4SDG hosted an online interactive workshop on January 29th called “Mobilizing Youths for Climate Action: Citizen Science and Innovation in Monitoring and Achieving the SDGs”.

The #LearningPlanet Festival brought together students, youth, teachers, researchers and the general public from around the world to participate in conferences, roundtables and workshops over 8 days. The goal was to promote a culture of hope and collective commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations.

The session “Mobilizing Youths for Climate Action: Citizen Science and Innovation in Monitoring and Achieving the SDGs” was organized by Learning Planet Institute and Université Paris Cité, members of the Crowd4SDG consortium, and was facilitated by Stephanie Chuah from the University of Geneva.  

“The youths are occupying a unique space within the climate movement; we are injecting hope and urgency to the cause. The energy and capacity that young people bring to the table need to be matched by institutions, by providing platforms and opportunities to amplify the voices and elevate the ideas. #LearningPlanet Festival and the Crowd4SDG project are doing just that.”  

 

Stephanie Chuah, University of Geneva

During the interactive workshop, the attendance was truly global. The participants explored ways in which youth can learn to become innovators for the SDG’s. It aimed to help student teams move their projects towards deployment.

Youths mobilized around climate and gender issues 

Five teams presented their projects: “Climate Warriors”, “Climate Gender Justice”, “Instituto Andape”, “Womer” and “Donate Water”.  The participants attending the workshop had the opportunity to share ideas with the teams during the breakout sessions. They discussed different topics, including tools for citizen science, skills, viability and sustainability of projects, volunteer and youth engagement and the concrete challenges the teams face. 

The GEAR Cycle

Initiatives organized by Crowd4SDG follow a robust innovation cycle called GEAR (gather, evaluate, accelerate, refine) over six months for each period. The first GEAR cycle began with an online screening and coaching of citizen-generated ideas for climate action and water in the fall of 2020.  The second cycle started as of August 2021 aims to tackle climate and gender issues.

The teams are currently completing a challenge-based innovation workshop hosted by IdeaSquare at CERN. Two most promising projects will be selected to move ahead to the next phase where they will be presenting their projects at the Geneva Trialogue on March 17th.

The Crowd4SDG consortium (UNIGE, CERN, CSIC, IIIA, Politecnico di Milano, UNITAR, Universite Paris Cité and Learning Planet Institute (formerly CRI) promotes citizen science aimed at the SDGs, focusing on Climate Action. The goal of this EU funded project is to assess the usefulness of practical innovations developed by the teams, and research and investigate how AI applications can enhance and provide effective monitoring of SDG targets and indicators by citizens.