From 7th to 9th November, YRE Ghana participated at the second pan African SDGs Youth Summit held in Accra. This year’s theme was “Moving from Policy to Action”, and convened more than 1400 participants from 46 Countries across Africa and beyond. The African continent has the youngest population in the world, and it is crucial to involve the youth to prepare for the future. The Ghanaian Government recognizes this by supporting the event.

YRE Ghana are so lucky that three of our board members work for the organization arranging the summit, so we have followed the process of putting the event together up close. There is no doubt that they have also used some of their experience from YRE in communicating from the event, at least on social media, and by highlighting climate change as a topic in the program. A topic that turned out to be a major concern to majority of the participants.

The focus of the African youth SDGs summit is to provide a platform where African youth, civil society, private sector and policy makers can come together to dissect issues and find the way forward in the implementation of the SDGS in Africa. It seeks to harness youth talent and groom the youth to be proactive and innovative, providing safe spaces for them to operate with regards to the SDGs Agenda.

We were there with representatives from two cities. They were tasked to cover the event on social media and to take notes to submit a report that will be published in a national paper. Some of our representatives were also interviewed by the conference broadcaster and national television on their view on the SDGs, the conference and the role of the SDGs.

Next year we hope to also see YRE representatives from other countries at this amazing event. And we promise to lobby hard to put even more environmental issues on the program for the next event.