Re:Acting to Poverty and Climate Change (11 Jul 2008)

250 young people gathered in the grounds of Oscott College, Birmingham, over the Glastonbury weekend for the Re:Act youth festival. While its older cousin might have welcomed Jay-Z and Neil Diamond (!), the Bishop Walsh Band and Crossbeam took to the stage in Birmingham.

And livesimply and CAFOD were there too, offering workshops on needs and wants and climate change. Both workshops were over-subscribed and the young people worked together to think about ways they could take action for change.

The Great Livesimply Auction sold the young people's lives back to them and got them to think about what they valued most in their lives. It offered simple actions to make a change.

Rebecca at Bishop Walsh school was already taking action for livesimply, "we've got a fairtrade stall at school through the RE department, and had to pursuade the school it was OK to break the no-chocolate rule!"

The CAFOD Climate Change Treasure Hunt saw loads of young people running all over the College grounds finding clues and answering questions about climate change. Emily, Abbey and Maria from Ss Peter and Paul, Birmingham said, "it has really helped us understand more about what CAFOD does."

Amie, Grace, Joanne, Rory and Melissa from St Patrick's, Coventry wanted to do the Treasure Hunt because "it looked fun and everyone loves a treasure hunt! We wanna give our treasure to CAFOD because we wanna help".

Rory, Sam, Kev, Ned, Fionn and Laurence from St Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman schools said the best bit was "running round eating cola bottles that we found! Global warming's going to effect everyone and we can all do something to stop it."

>>download the auction here