*Kimmie Weeks

*Patrick Coker

*Stamping the global petition

By Saki G

The United Nations celebrated it’s 64th anniversary today with millions of youth around the world, including Liberia, where a youth group dedicated it as a day of climate action as prescribed by the United Nations calendar, “The Road to Copenhagen.”

In Liberia, the youth of Wood Camp in collaboration with the Youth Crime Watch of Liberia in Paynesville, added their voices to the global chorus, challenging key stakeholders who will be meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009, to commit themselves to the climate deal that will define a new direction in the fight against climate change.  The campaign, which started with a parade through the principal streets of Wood Camp, saw students from three schools in Paynesville forming part of the campaign. They included, St Matthew Lutheran high School, F-SHAM Girls Academy, and Victory Williams High school.  The theme of the campaign was, “The Road to COP 15 – Seal The Deal!”.  An indoor program followed next, and it was graced by Mr. Patrick Coker of UNMIL (United Nations Mission in Liberia) Civil Affairs in Liberia who served as keynote speaker and Ambassador Kimmie Weeks of YAI (Youth Action International), who made brief remarks challenging young people not to see themselves as those who cannot make positive contributions to society. He further thanked the organizers of the event, and encouraged them to continue to get the youth involved into finding solutions to existing global problems such as climate change. For his part, Mr. Patrick Coker gave his keynote address. Like a classroom teacher he helped students to understand the issues of climate change. Furthermore, Mr. Coker opened a dialogue between he and the audience as each member of the audience, mostly uniformed students, gave his or her views about climate change and the way forward to the COP (Copenhagen) 15 conference.

The program saw a youth from the wood camp community, Miss Georgette Sithole, presenting a position statement to the audience. The position statement, which  centered chiefly around humans unwillingness to recognize the effects of green house gases, also challenged youth, politicians, business organizations, environmental groups and the United Nations  to make good their decisions at the COP 15 meeting as it is considered a gateway to the future and that anything less than an agreement would have greater consequences on the lives of young people, especially the poor ones.

One of the most interesting activities at the program was the stamping of the Global Petition as per the United Nations campaign activities. Ambassador Kimmie Weeks first stamped and signed the global petition, followed by Mr Coker and the rest of the audience and organizers of the event. Stamping and signing the global petition was symbolic to galvanizing political will and public support for reaching a comprehensive global climate agreement in Copenhagen in December.  Meanwhile, the stamped and signed petition, according to the organizers of the event, will be framed and formally presented to the COP 15 participants through the United Nations.