The Youth Climate Champions programme (YCC) is putting together a podcast to help young people get up to speed on the most pressing issues around climate – and creating a platform where they can give voice to their concerns.

Although young people will face the brunt of climate change, they are constrained by a lack of access to climate policy processes, particularly in policy formulation, and have limited access to resources, knowledge, expertise, and opportunities.

The Youth Climate Champions (YCC) Programme, part of the Climate Ambition to Accountability Project, aims to address this by building a cohort of well-capacitated youth climate activists through a variety of activities, among them a YCC Bootcamp and the YCC podcast.

The new YCC podcast, which will have four seasons, aims to capacitate youth on basic climate change knowledge and COP27 developments, as well as serve as a platform for youth organizations to amplify their voices on key climate issues.

The first season focuses on climate change basics and how it affects youth, global and local climate policy basics, the Just Energy Transition, and the intergenerational dialogue.

Guests kicking off the first three episodes include Crispian Olver (Presidential Climate Comission), Bulelwa Ngewana (Open Society Foundations), Mitchelle Makha (African Climate Alliance), Khulenkani Magwaza (SAYCCC), Gabriel Klaasen and Lisa Mathiso (Project 90 by 30), and more exciting ones to come as the rest of the season gets produced.

The second season will be a deep dive into the COP27 climate meeting which takes place in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt in November this year. It will walk listeners through the COP process, its history, how it functions today, and the outcomes of the meeting.

The final two seasons aim to amplify youth voices and organizations by providing a platform to speak about burning topics when it comes to climate change.

For the podcast trailer, go to Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0532oEyawZADt13Bb6AwD4 or Anchor: https://anchor.fm/youth-climate-champions-programme.

WWF South Africa, the South African Climate Action Network (SACAN) and the Instittue for Economic Justice (IEJ) are working together onthe Climate Ambition to Accountability Project. This work is possible with funding support from the European Union as part of its Climate Change Champions programme.