Young people lead the way in this year’s Youth Environment Summit
November 3, 2023
In September, we hosted our annual Youth Environment Summit, bringing together Youth Forum participants from over the years to take part in a variety of environmental experiences and challenges. Anthea Hanson, our Youth and Sustainability Officer, talks about this year’s summit and how it was one of the best ones yet!
The 2023 Youth Environment Summit is off!
It’s 4pm on Friday 29th September, everything is in place, the young people are due to arrive any minute and there is a sense of anticipation in the staff. The Youth Environment Summit has taken a year to plan, the majority of the young people coming have been with us for that year and a few from the very beginning seven years ago.
The setting is in Ingleborough Hall with its fantastic grounds nestled in woodland beneath Ingleborough, one of the Yorkshire Three Peaks.
As soon as they arrive, we are off! With a full programme of varied and mainly participant-led activities. On Friday, Yusuf, 15, from Bradford and Alice and Jude, also 15, from Cumbria put on a suit (Yusuf wearing jacket and trousers, Alice a tie). In a flamboyant interactive session they tease out questions from the 21 participants for the Question Time session on Saturday night. Satisfied with the range of questions these are sent off to the panel for their perusal.
This is quickly followed by a night time walk. Enhanced by a journey through secret tunnels and with a harvest moon, the young people made their way using the natural light to an opening in the trees. The moon was absolutely magnificent and Isobel, 16, and Nico, 15, did a great job managing the group and making sure as many came back as went out. Always a good result!
If you asked the young people all the reasons they came to the Youth Forum, one would be to spend time with each other and to make long lasting friends. Rachel and Willow both from Leeds have been coming since they were 12 and are now 20 living in different parts of the country. It is a chance to reconnect in a place that they love, the Yorkshire Dales. They are both incredibly creative, Willow leading in a really fun icebreaker and Rachel taking the most fabulous pictures of the harvest moon and documenting the whole weekend.
Elinor, who wanted to be the next David Attenborough when she was younger, first got involved in YDMT’s Green Futures project when she completed her John Muir award back in 2019 and has been attending the Youth Forum ever since.
She said: “I’ve always been interested in nature, especially from watching David Attenborough documentaries! The Youth Forum is a good way to help you see that small changes are enough to make a difference to the bigger picture!”
We asked Elinor what advice would she give to someone who has never been to the Youth Forum or Youth Summit before, and she said: “Join in with as many activities as you can, talk to as many people as you can! Especially the activity leaders, ask them as many questions as possible, because it can lead to good connections for future job opportunities.”
Time to explore the Yorkshire Dales
On Saturday morning we started with a bit of a treat and a chance to immerse themselves in the Dales. Two groups went off Gorge scrambling and the third walked along the nature trail to Ingleborough Cave.
On their return the panellists had arrived. Very kindly, Ellie from Ribble Rivers Trust, Josh from the Peat Partnership, Jamie from Kingsdale Head Farm, and Robyn from Wild Ingleborough came to be gently grilled by Yusuf, Alice and Jude. What followed was a really inspiring session where we found out that they were all motivated from a young age by being in nature and that actually they were already doing their dream jobs.
Penny attended the YDMT Youth Summit for the first time this year. At college, she is in the Sustainability Team, which involves running workshops on sustainability, encouraging recycling and hosting clothes swaps, as well as fundraising for environmental charities.
We asked Penny about what she thinks needs to change when it comes to tackling climate change:
“A lot of people think it’s not up to them to make a difference and that they don’t have any power, but if everyone did a little something, it would all add up! This could be picking up a piece of litter, recycling correctly, reusing Tupperware and water bottles as much as possible. As well as trying not to overconsume. Sometimes we want things but don’t need them; if there is less demand for products, it would make companies reduce their scales of products that pollute the environment.”
“I think there needs to be a greater appreciation and more gratitude for nature and how we wouldn’t be here without it.”
Activities in the woods
Following the panel, the participants enjoyed activities in the ground when the heavy rain didn’t dampen their spirits. Thomas had set up a fire challenge, could they burn through the string? A challenge indeed in that weather! Finn and Monika had used the onsite blindfold trail, adding a twist of feely bags along the way, really giving the senses a bit of a work out. Willow had put together a scavenger hunt, Sarah from Yorkshire Wildlife trust worked creating symbols for a coat of arms that said something about themselves in nature and YDMT’s Fiona held a whittling session.
After tea, the young people were able to enjoy having an outside facilitator who came in to lead a music session trying to create a song. After a hilarious start they came up with a song about a woodmouse under the rather impressive blue moon the night before. A testament to the reasonably dark skies in this part of the world.
Sunday comes and although the weekend is only a short space of time, so much has happened. Friends have been made and rekindled, confidences increased and knowledge about the world around them. To finish off the weekend, the young people help to establish brash piles in the woodlands for small mammals to overwinter in then returning weary but buoyant at the same time.
We round the summit off with a beautiful and powerful review of the weekend in the grounds, already anticipating what we will do next year. Read what some of the young people had to say below. We felt it was one of the best Youth Summits to date and can’t wait to do it all again next year.
Young people share their thoughts and feelings
The young people were asked to find something within the grounds and explain how it represented their thoughts and feelings about the weekend:
Monica found a dying branch “I feel like we all branched out of our comfort zones, and also because even though it’s dead and bare, it still has a purpose such as a hedgehog habitat.”
Aaden found a tiny leaf “Because no matter how small you feel, you’re always part of something bigger”
Jude picked small flowers “Everyone has bloomed out of these great friendships”
Elinor found a leaf, and her feedback was “it’s nice to meet with likeminded people, and think about something else other than my A-Levels for the weekend”
Matilda picked a confident looking branch “I’m quite a confident person, but when it comes to people my own age I’m not, so Youth Forum is a good way to help with that”
Isobel found a type of grass from the meadow “we all kind of feel sometimes like we’re there doing not a great deal but then something like this grass will flower, and then it will have a much bigger impact than you kind of imagine”
Find out more about our work with young people and our Green Futures programme.
