Work on the Vision 2030 Pillar of ‘Sustainable Planet’ was the focus of two webinars held on 5 and 6 February 2025, which were joined by YMCA climate specialists from 18 countries.
The online meetings both looked back, and looked forward.
They looked back on Movement-wide work done on the Sustainable Planet Pillar so far, including:
- the creation of a small team of YMCA climate specialists, mainly grouped in the Green Advocacy Coalition and the North American Sustainability Co-Lab
- the completion of a research survey on YMCA National Movements’ current activities in the Sustainable Planet field, which heard from some 90 National Movements and Local Associations worldwide: a key finding of the report was that
- the near-completion of two major reports by World YMCA with the pro-bono help of EY (Ernst & Young) Australia which are due to be launched in April 2025:
- Achieving a Sustainable Planet: The Case for Change – a publication aimed at young people, governments and businesses everywhere
- A practical guide for YMCAs turning our shared Sustainable Planet priorities into reality – a publication aimed specially at national and local YMCAs
- the running of two workshops at the Accelerator Summit in Mombasa, Kenya in October 2024, whose main focus was to debate and finetune the three strategic YMCA goals for the Pillar, under ‘Internal YMCA transformation’ as we seek to become climate neutral, under ‘Community empowerment’ as we champion environmental responsibility in the local programmes and initiatives we run, and under ‘Global advocacy’ as we call for inclusive climate policies across the world.
And they looked forward to:
- the launch of the two above reports in April
- the merging of several existing communication hubs and platforms housing our YMCA work and best practice on environmental issues, and the development of Movement wide indicators and measurement tools
- the preparations for YMCA’s presence at COP 30 in Belem, Brazil in November 2025 with the development of a position paper and global advocacy plans
Said Shakil Karim, the World YMCA Pillar Lead on Sustainable Planet: ‘All of our discussions reinforce the YMCA’s commitment to sustainability through collective action, education, and measurable impact. We have done much, and have much further to go. And our work is broad in covering a global impact measurement framework as well as governance strategies, collaboration platforms, and leadership engagement to strengthen climate action across our YMCA Movement. These meetings were a great start to a busy plan of activities to deepen our YMCA-wide work on Sustainable Planet in 2025.’
