The Ending

From November 6th to November 17th the 23rd annual COP conference took place in Bonn, Germany in which 9 students along with their teachers got to have a once in a lifetime experience. The trip helped us build career and lifestyle skills, create opportunities to meet people, develop our career interests, find inspiration, and overall have a good time. Although we are all exhausted from the early morning to late night schedules (also jet lag), I don’t think anyone would change the trip at all.

At the conference we were expected to be able to start conversations with people to find out why they were there and what their plans were. We followed schedules of conference meetings that we had planned out for that day or picked up sessions along the way, which provided us with the skill of being organized and making our days productive. At the conference it is very easy to make contacts and I can guarantee that people will give you their business card or, as I’ve seen everywhere, flash drives with their information. On the train rides or at the conference I would often dare myself to start talking to anyone with a badge, I did it so often that the others started to do it too so that we all listened to people telling us their stories.

On this trip while talking to NGO representatives, government officials, citizens, and students we were able to make quite a few contacts. Some were contacts that could be used for future projects like our senior one, some for mentor, as nearly all of us are in the mentor program, and some for friendships. On the second day we met with students from three schools at the International School of Bonn. Some us have befriended the students of those other schools and we had the chance to see them both at the conference and outside of it. In conference sessions the people on the panels shared their stories bringing some of us to tears on how moving they were and the impact they made. We met many Minnesotans and bonded over our passion for climate change action. We found inspiration and many of us commented on how a lot of the ideas we were hearing could be our senior projects. We drew from what people were saying and we wanted to connect it and apply it to the United States and at the local level.

This trip allowed us to listen to what the citizens of the world had to say about our changing climate. We heard and we are going to put it into action. Whether we put it into projects like our senior one, future jobs, or being active citizens, we have learned so much on this trip that we will take with us forever. No matter what we are still in.

The COP23 Kids