Medsin-UK arrives in Copenhagen – via 24 hour bus ride!

The IFMSA August Meeting and General Assembly starts tomorrow, but Medsin-UK have already been working hard in Copenhagen.

Three delegates have come over from the UK via a 24 hour bus. Medsin-UK tries to reduce the carbon footprint of our involvement at IFMSA GAs by keeping our delegation size small. This year as the GA is in Europe we have asked our delegates to go overland to reduce our travel emissions, and about 2/3rds are doing so.

Myself, Jonny Meldrum and Jamie Yeats have travelled by bus from London to do the preGA before the main meeting. Jonny and I have joined the Think Global Climate Change and Health workshop.

We’re on the last day, and have learnt so much over the past two days. The aim of this workshop , as well to educate on climate change science, is also to provide participants with practical and useful skills that can be taken back to their National Member Organisations. We are really hoping that the participants will start up Climate Change and Health campaigns, such as Medsin’s Healthy Planet. There is also opportunities to be involved with the IFMSA’s international work such as attending the COP17 in Durban with the IFMSA delegation.

These two days have been a combination of education on Climate Change, skills training and ideas sharing. We have been really fortunate to have had some great externals, including Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum from the Public Health and Environment department at the WHO, a lecturer from the School of Global Health in Copenhagen, and the Denmark 10:10 campaign.

10:10 Denmark has worked with us to create a 10:10 checklist for how we as delegates can reduce our carbon emissions at conferences. It is really exciting as this is a practical and tangible campaign that we can use now at the GA to promote climate friendly action, and hopefully will get lots of other GA delegates signing up for 10:10, and using the checklist. We hope in the future we can present the campaign and the checklist to the plenary, and NMOs will be able to take the campaign back home.

 

The checklist includes really useful, and simple advice such as “buy local food, try local beers and wine”, “keep your shower to less than 5 minutes”, and “take the stairs”. All easy to achieve goals considering how delicious Danish beer is, how cramped the showers are at the hotel, and we all need exercise as we spend all day sitting down!!

It is also a worldwide campaign, that has online resources that all the delegates can access in their own countries.

Today is about using the skills and education from the past two days to create SMART plans for CC and H campaigns and action. It has been incredible to hear medical students from all over the world expressing their concern about climate change, and how their desire to stop it has brought them to our workshop. Delegates are from a far a field at South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Canada, Japan, Italy, China, Spain, France, Peru, New Zealand, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ghana and so many more.

The best point of the workshop so far for me has been training on Public Narrative; the use of story telling for campaigning, and hearing people’s stories. It is such a powerful tool, and perfect for conveying climate change messages, and encouraging action.

The participants have been incredible, and the organisers have learnt so much more from them, that they have learnt from us, feeling reinvigorated enthusiasm to get more involved with Climate Change campaigning.