Reflections From The SECA Annual Conference
SECA - New connections and opportunities
We recently attended the South-East Climate Alliance (SECA) annual conference in Brighton with a team of our Young Leaders to showcase what we’ve been working on, and where we can go from here!
The day at SECA’s Annual Gathering, for us, was defined by our incredible Young Leaders who presented our Young Leaders project to the room and led our roundtable. Hannah Lucey and Jack Zhang delivered testimonies to the crowd. Hannah presented the Young Leaders Manifesto (the culmination of months of collective work and a call to action to Local Authorities to strengthen their climate strategies). Following this, Jack gave a close-to-home reminder of the extreme weather consequences of climate change, and the potential for their long-lasting effects on food supply and community wellbeing.
Getting young people’s work heard by so many organisations was a fantastic opportunity, so thank you to SECA!
Around our OnePlanet table, Kelsie Garbutt and Ryan Skeats led discussions on ‘How can OnePlanet help you collaborate better?’, and showed everyone the ropes on the platform. All sorts of people joined us, from community groups, conservation leads, teachers, and representatives from large environmental charities including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
We had enlightening chats about how tech can help us to collaborate more effectively, achieve more and make use of the co-benefits of our actions. A particular highlight for us was the insight into the unique challenges different organisations face, and how we can help mitigate these through using tech to do some heavy lifting, allowing everyone to get on with their actions and not be tied down with reporting! These conversations also inspired some to check out our Community Partners programme, which is open to all.
Overall, we’d like to thank SECA for making it a great day out for us at OnePlanet, giving us the chance to form many new connections for us to help form the regenerative communities we need, and for our Young Leaders to make needed connections as they start out on their careers.