“Clean Cooking is a youth issue. 90% of the world’s youth live in regions with the lowest access to clean cooking. This disproportionately impacts youth education, employment, and health.” – Katja Lasseur, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Ghana, at the Forum’s Opening Plenary

Youth are taking action – as entrepreneurs, activists, researchers, and more – to raise awareness and improve access to clean cooking solutions in their communities and countries, but often lack reliable access to youth-inclusive opportunities to participate as equitable stakeholders across the clean cooking ecosystem.

Photo courtesy of the Clean Cooking Alliance at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022

First-ever youth delegation at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022

In October 2022, The Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) partnered with Student Energy to support a delegation of 20 global youth to participate in the Clean Cooking Forum in Accra, Ghana.  

The Clean Cooking Forum is the sector’s flagship event, convening leading policymakers, entrepreneurs, investors, donors, and other key partners working towards achieving clean cooking for all and accelerating progress toward global development and climate goals. The addition of a youth delegation to the Forum recognizes and celebrates the vital role of youth in realizing these ambitions.

The delegation included 20 diverse participants from 14 countries, identified through Student Energy and CCA’s youth networks.  Delegates from across Sub-Saharan Africa, where the lack of clean cooking is particularly pronounced,  made up 70% of the youth delegation, and more than 50% of delegates were women, acknowledging the gender equity dimensions of the issue.

Delegates not only had the opportunity to attend the Forum plenary and breakout sessions, innovation expo, and networking receptions, but many of the youth delegates participated as speakers, moderators, and exhibitors throughout the three-day event.  For example, the session, “Changemakers of Today: Youth Advancing Sustainable Action,” featured a panel of six young entrepreneurs and innovators discussing how they are tackling clean cooking challenges and the support youth need to scale their efforts.

“From where I stand, clean cooking is not just about food. It transcends the goings-on confined to the kitchen and spills into health, gender equality, economic gains and sustainable societies.”- Cherop Soy, Ecowarrior Kenya and Youth Delegate at the 2022 Clean Cooking Forum

Student Energy supported delegates with preparatory and interactive webinars focused on presentation and networking skills, and provided on-site support and a post-event debrief. Delegates were able to share their expertise through speaking engagements, engage in discussions about youth involvement in decision-making, and help spread the forum’s key messaging by taking on communication roles. The active involvement of young people at the forum led to greater ambition from stakeholders in collaborating with them on clean cooking initiatives.

Photo courtesy of the Clean Cooking Alliance at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022

Intergenerational Roundtable on Youth Engagement in Clean Cooking

On the final day of the Clean Cooking Forum, an Intergenerational Roundtable on Youth Engagement in Clean Cooking brought together eminent senior leaders from the clean cooking sector to engage in dialogue with the youth delegation and other youth attending the Forum. The Roundtable was designed to showcase the emerging talent of young changemakers to participate in clean cooking transitions, understand the challenges young people are encountering in the sector, and discuss how senior leaders can support youth-led change and create an enabling and inclusive environment for youth to acquire, develop and utilize their skills.

More than 15 youth participants were joined by senior leaders, including H.E. Samira Bauwmia, Second Lady of the Republic of Ghana Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of Clean Cooking Alliance; Sheila Oparaocha, Director of the ENERGIA Network; and Mohan Das Manandhar, Chairperson at Sustainable Prosperity Initiative Nepal, in an interactive discussion facilitated by Jaff Marilyn Bongmo, a youth delegate from Cameroon. 

Photo courtesy of the Clean Cooking Alliance at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022

The lively dialogue explored why inclusive youth participation is vital for achieving universal access to clean cooking and the challenges youth currently face in having their voices heard, getting a seat at decision-making tables, and accessing opportunities for meaningful engagement.  

Participants discussed a variety of ways to increase intergenerational collaboration, empower youth leaders, and support education and capacity-building activities in the clean cooking sector.

“Clean Cooking is a youth issue. First and foremost young people need to be creative participants and at the center of solutions. Young people also benefit from clean cooking from access to health, education and employment opportunities.” – Helen Watts, Executive Director of Student Energy

Youth Delegation Calls to Action

Following the Forum, the Youth Delegation developed the following calls to action, which focus both on what youth themselves can do to effectively self-organize and increase momentum behind this cause, and what organizations and decision-makers should do to ensure that youth are meaningfully included across the clean cooking ecosystem:

1. Stakeholders in the clean cooking sector should proactively work to ensure that youth are equally represented at the table and have their core needs met, in able to meaningfully participate. 
2. Capacity building for youth does not end with providing skills training. Youth must also be provided with industry opportunities to use these skills and connect them to the market.
3. Stakeholders across the clean cooking ecosystem must recognize and work to remove barriers that limit the participation of youth, women, and marginalized communities, actively creating incentives and opportunities for inclusive engagement, training, and employment in the clean cooking sector.
4. Established leaders in the clean cooking sector should leverage the power of youth as changemakers and innovators: this can be particularly valuable in the form of mentorship, which is a two-way learning process.
5. There is no one way to contribute to clean cooking. Young people should seek actionable ways to participate in clean cooking, leaning into their unique skills and expertise – as entrepreneurs, engineers, storytellers, artists, and beyond.
6. Young people should collaborate to form a unified effort, which requires working at a grassroots level with students and other youth and being ready to present clearly defined, data-driven asks when they have seats at the decision-making table or a chance to speak directly with established leaders. 

Photo courtesy of the Clean Cooking Alliance at the Clean Cooking Forum 2022

Youth Insights Feature: Check out youth delegate Cherop Soy’s blog post “What Clean Cooking Isn’t” for more insights gathered by young people at the forum on clean cooking.

Conclusion: Clean cooking is a youth issue

The Clean Cooking Forum 2022, placed young changemakers at the forefront of the clean cooking dialogue, with youth and senior leaders aligned on the urgent need for action and the essential role young people will play in achieving universal access. 

“The places where the biggest gaps on clean cooking have the highest youth populations. Youth are on the ground and have the knowledge to bring”. –Akil Callendar, Youth Specialist at Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), at the Forum’s Youth Closing Plenary

CCA continues to recognize the vital role of youth in achieving universal access to clean cooking and has recently undertaken a youth consultation process and interactive webinar to inform its forthcoming youth engagement strategy.  

Student Energy is excited to continue working with CCA in 2023 and beyond in expanding the youth engagement agenda in clean cooking. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements and activities to help youth act and lead on clean cooking in their countries and communities.

About Clean Cooking Alliance

Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) works with a global network of partners to build an inclusive industry that makes clean cooking accessible to the three billion people who live each day without it. Established in 2010, CCA is driving consumer demand, mobilizing investment to build a pipeline of scalable businesses, and fostering an enabling environment that allows the sector to thrive.

Clean cooking transforms lives by improving health, protecting the climate and the environment, empowering women, and helping consumers save time and money.

About Student Energy

Student Energy is a global youth-led organization empowering young people to accelerate the sustainable energy transition through a variety of initiatives, including university-based Chapters, a digital Energy System Map that has reached over 13 million views, and the largest student-led energy conference in the world. Student Energy works with a network of 50,000 young people from over 120 countries to build the knowledge, skills, and networks they need to take action on energy.

Links to donate, petitions, and anti-racism resource guides can be found at the bottom of this post.

The widespread activism and collective organizing in the United States, Canada, and now globally over the past several days has brought racial injustice to the forefront of digital media and discourse. This movement is not new: Black activists and organizations, particularly young people, have been organizing for decades to dismantle and rebuild inherently racist and unjust legal, educational, and governance systems that give rise to police brutality and state violence. However, this moment calls for all organizations regardless of sector to learn, support and amplify movements led by Black activists, and to encourage their network to do the same.

While systemic racism and police violence in the United States may dominate news media coverage, we cannot ignore that systemic racism and state violence are prevalent in Canada as well. Ongoing violence against Black and Indigenous communities in Canada is something we must address even after this moment, even in spaces or situations where it may not be comfortable to do so.

In the energy industry and in the energy and climate advocacy space, there is an underlying, and often unnamed issue: While some organizations do advocate for justice and equity as an integral part of a sustainable energy future, there are countless others whose advocacy is limited only to technological and policy solutions to reduce emissions and achieve economic growth. These incomplete approaches aim to address the climate crisis without explicitly addressing the systemic racism and injustice present in the energy system, in the climate crisis, and in the environmental movement. As Student Energy’s vision is to empower young people to create an energy future that is both sustainable and equitable, it’s extremely important to start this conversation with our fellow organizations in the energy space.

Student Energy’s Theory of Change outlines our values as an organization, and these values are centered on listening to and empowering young people and embedding equity and climate justice as an integral part of the energy transition. Recognizing that we are often in spaces where we are one of few youth-led organizations represented, raising critical questions on justice and equity in relation to the energy transition and climate change is an important part of our daily work. Here are some immediate and long-term actions we are taking as an organization to ensure that we are also explicitly incorporating anti-racist principles and advocacy to the work that we do:

• We are researching and developing a framework to embed anti-racism and equity into how we design and collaborate on programs with our partners. This framework will serve to increase the accessibility of our programs to BIPOC youth, resourcing for BIPOC youth-led sustainable energy initiatives, and support youth-led work with direct impacts on human rights in energy such as universal access, health and safety, energy in disaster responses, anti-discrimination in energy, community and Indigenous rights, and the relationship between conflict and energy.

• We will be adding additional anti-racism resources to our Communicating Justice and Equity in the Energy Transition training that is a part of staff onboarding. This resource is an introduction to the concepts of energy and climate justice, and explores historical and ongoing inequity across all aspects of the global energy system. For a condensed introduction to energy justice, including a case study of anti-Blackness in the energy system, please see our social media resource here.

• The impacts of climate change, the economic downturn, and the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be disproportionately felt by BIPOC communities. As we are an organization based in Canada, we will be advocating for Canada’s climate plans and COVID-19 recovery efforts to address systemic racial and economic inequity and include plans on how the future clean economy will not just be sustainable, but equitable.

Read more about what it means to have a just recovery from COVID-19 here.

• We will continue to seek out, work with, compensate and recommend Black-led organizations, speakers, and service providers.
• We will hold space in the workplace far beyond the next several weeks to continue to learn together about what anti-racist advocacy looks like for Student Energy, for the global climate movement, and for our team as individuals.

Finally, we want to emphasize that Student Energy’s conversations on equity and anti-racism in the climate and energy space will continue well beyond this current moment. We are committed to ongoing learning as an organization, and taking action to address anti-Black, anti-Indigenous and other forms of racism in the climate and energy space. We are committed to addressing economic and power inequities for young people globally and at an intersectional level, whether that means reducing barriers to access leadership-development and educational opportunities, accessing decision-making spaces, or being better equipped to implement appropriate climate solutions for their communities.

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If you are able to, one effective way to take action no matter where you are is by donating to support directly affected individuals, community organizations, and frontline organizers. On Instagram, we shared links to donate to the following organizations and fundraisers that are seeking donations at this time:

•       Black Lives Matter
•       NAACP Legal Defense Fund
•       Black Visions Collective
•       Reclaim the Block
•       Official George Floyd Memorial Fund
•       Justice for Regis GoFundMe

Please see the following lists for more organizations to support and ways to take action – these are continuously updated:

•       Support funds, anti-racism resource guides, petitions and ways to take action (includes Canada-focused actions)
•       Support bail funds and organizers
•       Support harmed Black-owned businesses