Category: Uncategorized

  • Our New Team in Stockholm

    The autumn has arrived in Sweden, bringing with it cold wind and rain. But it’s all about new sunshine in Wake-Up Call’s team in Stockholm. Last weekend we met six of our wonderful new trainees: Andréa Henriksson, Lovisa Lundgren, Elissa Berrill, Jennifer Unelius, Tova Melin och Anu Paajanen. Together with the “veteran” staff member in Stockholm, Lorentz Tovatt, the outgoing director Adam Olsson and the executive director Oleg Izyumenko they planned new activities and projects for the autumn term. You will hear more about our plans soon, but we can assure you that we have quite a few interesting things in the pipeline.

    Team members on the picture, left to right: Andréa Henriksson, Oleg Izyumenko, Elissa Berrill, Adam Olsson, Anu Paajanen and Lorentz Tovatt. Team members not seen on the picture: Lovisa Lundgren, Jennifer Unelius and Tova Melin

    And, despite Adam leaving to the UK to pursue a master’s degree in environmental policy-making at the London School of Economics, the team in Stockholm keeps going strong, with a new managing director, Elissa, and her crew, 80% of whom are new to the company. It means that in the next few week the emphasis will be on introducing our new team members to Wake-Up Call’s philosophy, methodology and mission, as well as training them in workshop facilitation, presentation techniques, Public Narrative and doing a lot of networking with like-minded youths in Stockholm region and the rest of Sweden.

    It seems like it’s going to be a very interesting autumn for Wake-Up Call. Stay tuned for more news! 😉

  • Join us in Helsinki on September 21–23!

    Once again, Wake-Up Call is going to Finland to participate in Globsol Nordic Youth Conference and we want you to tag along! Globsol is a fantastic playground for bright and engaged young people from Sweden and Finland to discuss important global issues and how we can create real and positive change towards a more sustainable, just and peaceful world. The weekend will be taking place in Helsinki on September 21–23 where four parallel workshops will be held. The topics are 1) “Sustainable Consumption”, 2) “Growing Economic and Social Inequalities”, 3) “Unfair Distribution of Resources in the World,” 4) “Sustainable Solutions”. They are all designed to give the participants a better understanding of the respective issues while inspiring them to take positive action. Wake-Up Call is facilitating the workshop on sustainable solution and we would love to invite you to join our workshops. Log into www.globsol.info and sign up!

  • Back to our birthplace: everyone’s invited!

    Planet Lund: We're a part of it!This week Wake-Up Call is in Lund, the city where our company was founded three years ago. The reason for revisiting our “birthplace” is that Wake-Up Call is involved in arranging “a night of inspiration for a more sustainable society”, to quote the Facebook page for the event happening this Thursday afternoon. The event’s programme is made of two parts – an inspirational presentation and a practical workshop:

    Session 1: “Youth Climate Action”: This session aims at highlighting inspiring stories and successes of young people, from all over the world, passionate to change the world.

    Session 2: “Redesign the World”: In this workshop participants will take on the role of social entrepreneurs as they start ideas for a better world.

    The evening is free of charge and the participants do not need to pre-register in order to participate. Both activites will be held in English. We will be offering free snacks and non-alcoholic drinks during the break.

    We want to thank our amazing partners: Hållbart Universitet – Lund Students for Sustainability, the City of Lund, and Ungdomsforum för Agenda 21 (UFO). Without their support and contribution this event would not be possible.

  • Sweden’s first Power Shift: we wrote history last weekend!

    Sweden’s first ever Power Shift happened last weekend in Gothenburg. ‘What is Power Shift?’, you may wonder.

    Power Shift was initiated first in 2007, when 6 000 youths gathered in Washington, DC. to show the politicians that there’s a strong demand for improved environmental policies. Two years later the number of participants grew up to 12 000 that gathered outside the Capitol. Ever since the movement continued to organise demonstration that manifested its growing power. One of the most famous examples of that was a flash dance organised in front of the Sydney Opera House.

    Last weekend went down in history as the date of Sweden’s very first Power Shift. Over 130 young people gathered in Gothenburg to show how much they care for the climate and for their collective future. In the event’s programme one could find presentations, workshops and a big flashmob towards the end of the three-days conference:

    There was also a set of political demands that were highlighted during the event:

    • 100 percent renewable energy in Sweden
    • CO2-neutral Sweden before the year 2030
    • Big investments into the green infrastructure (railroads, high-speed trains, expanded bicycle lanes, climate-proof housing etc.)
    • Sustainable jobs for young people
    Power Shift Sweden, Photo © Peter Stenberg / Sveriges Radio
    Photo © Peter Stenberg / Sveriges Radio

    Wake-Up Call was listed among the organisers and so we were involved in the event’s presentations and workshops. I, for example, made a keynote speech in which I focused on inspiration and the things that motivate people to get engaged. On Saturday I gave a presentation about the situation with the UN climate negotiations.

    The entire weekend was a huge success that reached its peak with a big and media-savvy action in the city centre calling for bolder environmental policies from the Swedish government.

  • Redesign@Power Shift

    Friends!

    After the amazing Power Shift this weekend a lot of us are a bit blown away and have needed some time to grasp it all. I myself feel as exuberated and full of hope as I did this Sunday. Damn, it was a great conference!

    Adam leads workshopWithout trying to sound self-glorifying my absolute peak was when me and Charlotte facilitated the workshop ‘Redesign the World’ on Saturday with some of the most amazing young climate leaders I have ever met. The level of engagement you showed and the bright ideas you developed from just ideas to clear-cut projects is what warms me this October day. Just the fact that the projects you initiated were pitched to key partners within an hour after the worskshop tells us a lot about what key figures attended the conference. The fact that they were met with open arms makes me believe in a very, very bright future for the Swedish youth climate movement.

    Thank you so much to all of you who participated, not only in the workshop but in the conference as a whole. What you do is vital!

  • Wake-Up Call meets the world in Vaggeryd!

    David Gillblom uppträder för Vaggeryds eleverThursday, 4 a.m. It’s time get up to catch a train towards the forests of Småland and Vaggeryd. The local school, Fenix Kunskapscentrum, are holding a World Conference, with students from exchange schools all over the world attending: Spain, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Poland, Kenya and Japan!

    Wake-Up Call were asked to hold an inspirational speech at the start of the conference, and we also invited our friends Kerstin and Olivia from Reconsider to hold idea workshops.

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  • Heroes of Todays stora plan

    Nu har vi precis gjort klar vår affärsplan för Heroes of Today skolsatsning 2012, som Magnus just nu sprider till utvalda personer/företag/myndigheter som skulle kunna vara intresserade av att satsa på projektet.

    Det känns fantastiskt.

    Den nya gymnasiereformen GY2011, som implementeras nu under hösten 2011, betonar vikten av hållbar utveckling och entreprenörskap i utbildningarna. I en del utbildningar ingår de som ämnen medan de i andra ska löpa som en röd tråd och genomsyra så gott som alla ämnen i hela utbildningen. Efter intervjuer med lärare har vi insett att det idag är oklart för många vad hållbar utveckling och entreprenörskap innebär och hur de ska applicera det i sin nuvarande undervisning.

    Och det är här vi kommer in i bilden.
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  • Something amazing is just around the corner!

    Hey hey, all friends and fans of Wake-Up Call!

    In case you haven’t heard yet:

    Something really exciting is on the horizon!

    ‘Moving Planet’ is a huge global day of action for climate this September 24, co-organized by groups like 350.org, Greenpeace, Yes Men, Oxfam, World Council of Churches and many others. On this day, all over the world, by the hundreds and thousands, people will be getting on bicycles and hitting the streets to push their communities and our politicians beyond fossil fuels. Just this morning Indonesia launched a 350 hour bike ride and New Zealand made a hilarious video about their plans to launch a rocket into space, and in just few hours our friend David Gillblom from Wake-Up Call’s local team in Gothenburg will meet 300 high school students in Vaggeryd to get them all excited about organising a ‘Moving Planet’ event in their home town. You can check it out at: http://www.moving-planet.org

    It’s just 10 days away. Will you join the fun and organise something in your place? It can be easy and fun: start with creating a new Facebook event and registering a new action on http://www.moving-planet.org/start Then let’s see how many friends you can get together for a bike ride, a roller-blade flash mob, a dance marathon, or a skateboard invasion in your town. If you need stencils, logos, T-shirts designs – we got it all covered on this page. And if you need to find more stuff, you always can use Google, right? 😉

  • Wake-Up Call at Tällberg Forum in Sigtuna

    Tällberg Forum

    How many brilliant minds can fit inside a tent?

    Well, the Tällberg Forum pushes for the world record. Since thursday the three of us, Anna, Erik and David of Wake-Up Call in Gothenburg have mingled around UNEP directors, Volvo CEOs, university presidents and many more bigwigs – but also a lot of people simply committed to changing the world with the means available to them. Notably youth from Yemen and Syria is here to report and discuss the continuing struggles in the arab spring uprisings. There is a sense that world history is present. Last year youth from Egypt were here on leadership training – the implications of that is chilling. Who knows what history making we were just part of?

    As we sit here now writing this in the dormitory, the former Swedish ambassador in China, Börje Ljunggren, is watching the tennis game unfolding while explaing how China is changing (Djokovic is winning). All these great people are friendly, accessible and share the vision that a more empathetic future is needed.
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  • Power Shift workshop and the UN climate negotiations session in Bonn

    Doing inspirational presentations with Wake-Up Call in the past year and a half I have been sharing a personal dream of bringing a Power Shift to Sweden. Now it seems like it’s going to happen. Last weekend I arrived to Bonn with a fabulous group of Swedish youth organisers from Stockholm, Lund, Uppsala and Gothenburg (some of them quite involved with Wake-Up Call in those places – a fact highlighted by our new beautiful T-shirts), on the picture below:

    Swedish participants of the Power Shift training workshop in Bonn
    Participants and trainers of the Power Shift training workshop (left to right): Andy, Johan, Oleg, Adam, Mervi, Johanna, Henrik, Alex

    The workshop with our friends from the UKYCC was very inspiring and empowering. The representatives of our local teams around Sweden are now stoked more than ever to contribute to the organising process to have a fantastic Power Shift event in October. Now the task is to bring the rest of the organising team together and give them the same inspirational and capacity-building experience as the one we just got here in Bonn. Which is exactly what we have in mind for this weekend in Lund, where our British friends will do their magic once again – something they’ve been doing all around Europe for the past five weeks. So if you’re interested in joining the Power Shift Sweden team, please come to Lund on June 18–19th and we promise you a truly energising and empowering time together.
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