Our Guiding Values
Collectively developed by the Y4N team, these are the values that ground our work and guide our decision making, project development and collaborations.
1. Orient towards solutions
Our work focuses on elevating tangible solutions to the nature and climate crises. Youth around the world are already leading on solutions within the nature-climate nexus. In our local communities, we are showing that actions speak louder than words; programs and initiatives, not pledges, create meaningful change. The crises of our time cannot be solved independently, and this is why we focus on intersectional and multidisciplinary approaches with diverse and inclusive leadership.
2. CENTRE PEOPLE, EQUITY, AND JUSTICE
At Youth4Nature, we believe that people and nature are deeply interconnected. This requires an intersectional and decolonial approach to tackling various forms of inequity and sovereignty within climate and environmental action that considers the diversity and power relations between and within different social groups. It also demands centering environmental justice, land justice, energy justice, social/economic justice, intergenerational justice and climate justice. Furthermore, it involves making a concerted effort as an organisation to continuously critique our own ways of knowing and working.
3. COMMIT TO LEARNING
Knowledge is the foundation for all the work that we do. To us, knowledge is inclusive of climate and biodiversity science, Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, and community-held knowledge. We commit to actively listening to, and upholding the knowledge of Indigenous peoples, frontline communities, and marginalised people around the world. We continuously seek to unlearn and relearn from and with diverse voices, ways of knowing and world-views; making a concerted effort as an organisation to perpetually critique our own ways of knowing and working. We commit to learning in interdisciplinary ways as we listen, conduct our own research, and exchange information.
4. UPHOLD OUR AUTONOMY
We retain autonomy over our work and identity as a by-youth, for-youth organisation as well as over ourselves as individuals and as young people working in partnership with established institutions. By remaining autonomous, we assert our independence as an organisation and the right to make decisions regarding the work we do, partnerships we accept, and the freedom to assert our views and perspectives. We support other youth and organisers who do the same.
5. THINK OF THE SYSTEM
Systems-change requires systems-thinking. The climate and nature crises are connected with social-political, economic challenges, and if we fail to act in an integrated way, we will not achieve our goals. We are committed to upholding our values in the ways that we work as a team and are actively working to break down silos through an interdisciplinary approach that is rooted in the recognition of relationships between ecological and human well-being that are reciprocal, regenerative and uphold them at all times.