Twenty-eight highly trained, impact-focused youth need your support to attend the 2012 Rio Earth Summit with SustainUS in order to work toward an equitable, inclusive, and sustainable planet for current and future generations. Young people continue to demonstrate their ability to drive forward change, and the need for strong youth participation in international forums like Rio+20 has never been more dire.
Youth are set to inherit a world filled with unprecedented environmental and social problems. Decisions made today about sustainable development in international governance forums such as the Rio+20 Earth Summit will shape the lives of future generations for decades to come. Despite the tremendous impact social, economic, and environmental policies will have upon the lives of young people, policy debates around issues of sustainable development remain inaccessible to the vast majority of youth.
SustainUS instills delegates with a strong understanding of policy issues, trains delegates on media outreach, campaigning, and lobbying, and creates pathways for youth participation in hard-to-access, high-level governance forums. Young leaders attending the Rio+20 Earth Summit will collaborate with international youth to influence government officials to embrace and implement policies that ensure a just and livable future while strengthening transnational cooperation among young people.
For over ten years SustainUS volunteers have coordinated the creation of a wide, far-reaching network of personally engaged leaders who understand that international cooperation is essential to a future in which all people recognize the inherent equality and interdependence of social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Individually, the skills delegates gain from attending conferences like the Earth Summit empower them to return to their own communities to realize this future.
