Glasgow schoolgirls trigger Twitter storm after signing climate charter

Schoolgirls had their voices heard around the world today (5 November) with a Twitter storm calling for climate action after signing Glasgow’s Children and Young People’s Climate Charter.

The S3 Glasgow pupils attending the Girls@COP26 conference at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) signed the Charter aimed at protecting children and young people from the impacts of climate change and engaging the world.

They then hit Twitter to declare: "We are pledging to undertake actions to #EngageTheWorldToChangeTheWorld by signing Glasgow’s Children and Young People’s Climate Charter. Join with us by sharing this tweet."

The Charter is an agreement between Glasgow City Council (GCC), citizens, partners and the city’s children and young people, and sets out a plan to work together to tackle the climate crisis.

The Girls@COP26 - The Solutions are Feminist conference at GCU was organised by GCC, in partnership with GCU's Climate Justice Centre and Women of the World (WOW) foundation to give them a voice in the fight for gender equality to tackle global climate change.

Smithycroft Secondary School S3 pupils Simisola Dosu and Summer Rose Dickson said they signed the climate charter to “get behind climate change action and get everyone else to support it for future generations”.

Simisola added: “We are the future and the future starts today. Signing the climate charter made us feel part of something really big.”

St Margaret Mary's Secondary School pupils Brogan McAloon and Megan Gilfillan are extremely passionate about fighting climate change and were excited about signing the climate charter.

Brogan said: “We are here to represent Glasgow schools and the city’s young women. We want to inspire them to go into STEM and to be more involved in climate activism.

“It’s really important we sort climate change, especially for people like me who live in disadvantaged areas. We don’t have the same opportunities to go out and protest to get involved in climate change.”

Lord Provost of Glasgow Philip Braat said: “Our children and young people are doing an amazing job making sure that their opinions on the climate emergency are heard and during COP26 they have a world stage in which to make sure their voices are heard.

“They have been instrumental in shaping their climate charter from the start and working with officers across the council to influence what they want tackled – they need to make the points now to secure their future on their planet.

“I am delighted to endorse their Climate Charter and have already signed to pledge my support to the children and young people of Glasgow.”

During the two-week conference, the girls will debate different aspects of the climate emergency and discuss the global issues around our environment and gender – Sustainable Development Goal 5 - with local, national and international experts.

GCU’s engineering expert and researcher Dr Tuleen Boutaleb, Associate Dean International School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment, inspired the girls during her inspiration STEM talk and witnessed the girls signing the Charter.

She said: “I was delighted to share some of my research work with the S3 girls and to be able to highlight how exciting it is to be a woman engineer. Being able to witness the signage of the climate charter was absolutely amazing.

“Engineers have tackled many challenges in the past and will continue to find solutions to problems including those that are climate-related. It is essential to inspire more girls to be engineers as, not only are more engineers needed now, and in the future, the girls’ perspective on finding solutions that will be fit for them is vital.”

To find out more about GCU at COP26, visit https://www.gcu.ac.uk/cop26.