Together with 80 to 100 young climate activists from different European countries, we want to organize a climate justice sailing trip on the Baltic Sea and an education and networking campaign on the topics 'climate change' and 'climate justice'. The participating organizations will be Turning the Tide, Fridays for Future Denmark, PUSH Sweden, Wandelwerk e.V. and Hawila Project. The sailing trip will take place from 28 August to 11 September 2021, starting in Copenhagen and ending in Kiel. The traditional ships Hawila, Jonas von Friedrichstadt, Lovis, Petrine and Zuversicht will participate. The aim of our project is to contribute to a better networking of the European climate justice movement on the one hand and to offer the participating activists a platform to become politically active together on the other hand. Our educational work is to take place on three different levels: First, we will design the preparation of the sailing trip as a participatory and consensus-oriented process. The more detailed planning of the sailing trip will be carried out jointly by the participating climate justice activists and the partner organizations. In this way, the participants are to be involved in the project at an early stage and enabled to participate. Secondly, there will be a comprehensive range of workshops on board the ships during the sailing trip, which the participating climate justice activists will organize and carry out together. The workshops are intended to enable a critical examination of the climate crisis and the underlying cultural patterns, to strengthen solidarity among the young climate activists, and to enable self-determined educational processes. Thirdly, we will organize, together with local initiatives, an extensive range of events in the harbors where we will stop with the ships during the sailing trip. These will probably be the cities of Copenhagen, Malmö, Rostock and Kiel as well as several smaller places. The events are aimed at a wider public. Using creative methods, we want to work together with local groups to promote a public debate on the climate crisis and an exchange of ideas on how the climate crisis can be countered. For example, we will have a mobile bicycle cinema on board one of the ships and show films about climate change and climate justice on the sails of the ships in the ports of call. Other event formats are: Street theater, discussion events, storytelling workshops with the banner "The true cost of coal", acrobatics in the ricks of the ships and much more. The preparation phase, the community on board a traditional sailing ship, and also the meetings with local groups and the local population in the ports of call will provide plenty of space for encounter and exchange. The sailing trip will provide the framework for the topic-related and transnational exchange of knowledge, opinions, best practice examples and experiences. It is our goal that all participants will bring back motivation and learned skills from the project into the society and their home towns and that they can and will actively implement the contents of the sailing trip there.
Our core objective was to raise awareness of the climate crisis and strengthen the European climate justice movement. The climate crisis endangers the livelihoods of humanity as well as the fundamental civil liberties of every human being. The fact is that the main causes of the climate crisis are the rich countries of the global North. The climate crisis can only be achieved - if at all - through a fundamental cultural change in the countries of the global North. We have implemented our goal in two directions. On the one hand, our project aimed to network young European climate justice activists. For this we have organized sailing trips on the Baltic Sea. On the other hand, to a wider public through events in the ports where we stopped during our sailing trips. Our extensive self-organized program of events was designed to promote critical thinking, strengthen intercultural competences, exchange ideas about common values and live them together. Our participatory and consensus-oriented approach enabled all participants to participate equally in the process and to practice common understanding.
We are a group of young people who want to work together to advance climate protection that is sustainable, globally equitable and seriously aimed towards not reaching the tipping points in the climate system. We are united by the awareness that there must be profound changes in politics and society for this to happen. We applied for the project in order to enable young people from different European countries, regardless of their origin and financial means, to participate and get started in climate activism and to promote a European network of the climate justice movement. That is why we applied for project funding through the "Youth for Europe" programme, on the one hand to be able to organise sailing trips on the Baltic Sea and on the other hand to be able to hold international preparatory meetings in various European cities. Without the project funding, many of the more than 100 young people who took part in our climate justice sailing trip in 2021 from Rostock via Lübeck to Kiel (Germany) and in 2022 from Copenhagen (Denmark) via Helsingborg (Sweden) and Nyborg (Denmark) to Kiel (Germany) would not have been able to participate.