Oxfam America Blog

Moey Newbold at the Copenhagen talks.

You’ve probably read about the giant, many-thousand-person march this weekend at the Copenhagen climate talks. One of those in the crowd was Moey Newbold, an Oxfam America CHANGE Leader and University of Oregon student who raised her own funds to attend the conference.

“I believe my generation has the unique opportunity to save the world. If no action is taken, the world will see catastrophic climate change within the next half century, the cost of which will be measured in human lives,” Newbold writes on her blog. “But at this pivotal moment, we have a window of opportunity. We can create the just, sustainable and prosperous future that we seek.”

Here’s her take on Saturday’s massive and colorful demonstration:

We began to walk with the march.  The crowd went on for days (or, rather ~4 miles I am told), and the general attitude was one of collective joy and determination.

My group was kind of moving through the crowd because we were trying to find the ‘youth’ section,’ so we saw the variety of the people involved.  There were people with communist flags, a party bus that was blaring techno music and shooting gold confetti, about 20 humans dressed as panda bears, a campfire on wheels (this was great because it was freezing out!), a group of people wearing green construction hats who every few minutes would stop then run forward, a life-sized marionette with people acting out the roles of world leaders being played by big business, several sails, an ark, and so much more. It was very easy to get separated from each other, and once we were separated, it was very hard to find each other again, but the instructions for how to meet were something like “meet me by the giant purple balloon next to the pandas with flames on their heads and after the dragon.”

You can keep up with her adventures here.

The year before I came to graduate school in the United States, I taught English and Social Studies at my old high school in Bombay. On the first day of teacher training, our impassioned headmistress Ms. Shirin Darasha, opened with, “There are three things you need to know about being a teacher. I want you to remember these every day as we start the new school year: Encourage, encourage, encourage.”

CHANGE alumni reunited in Boston earlier this month. Photo by: Cheryl Colombo/Oxfam America.

To encourage means to impart courage; to embolden; to give support to; and to foster. Oxfam America’s youth leadership program, the CHANGE Initiative, lives and breathes this value. You can see it in the faces of the 50 or so college students who come to Boston every summer for leadership and advocacy training, which prepares them to promote social change on a local and global level. They are scrubbed full of hope and excitement, and their energy to make a difference is palpable in how they respond to and engage with Oxfam staff during the week-long intensive training. To date, CHANGE has trained nearly 550 students from over 200 campuses.

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