For WAGGGS, responding to climate change therefore means investing in girls and young women as leaders, giving them the knowledge, confidence, skills and platforms to understand climate challenges, take action in their communities and influence the decisions that affect their futures.
Through programmes such as Girl-Led Action on Climate Change (GLACC) and the Plastic Tide Turners Challenge (PTTC), WAGGGS places non-formal education, peer learning and girl-led action at the centre of its approach. GLACC combines climate education with community action and advocacy, while PTTC helps young people move from understanding plastic pollution to changing behaviours, mobilising others and advocating for wider change. Together, the programmes demonstrate how learning can become action, and how action can become leadership.
In this edition of Leadership in Action, we speak with Pascaline Umulisa, Global Programme Manager, GLACC, and Rojo Andriamahery, Global Programme Manager, PTTC, about why this work matters, how girls move from learning to action, and what is distinctive about WAGGGS’ approach to climate leadership.
1. Climate change is a huge and complex global challenge. Why is it so important for WAGGGS to invest in girls and young women as part of the solution?
Climate change is not gender neutral. Girls and young women can experience climate impacts differently because of existing inequalities in rights, access to resources, decision-making power and opportunities. At the same time, their perspectives and lived experiences are still too often missing from conversations where climate policies and solutions are designed.
For WAGGGS, investing in girls and young women is therefore both a response to inequality and an investment in effective climate action. This approach also responds to what girls themselves have told us. WAGGGS’ global consultation on climate change, Bring In the Girls, gathered the views of more than 33,000 girls and young women from 90 countries and territories. Their experiences and recommendations reinforced the importance of creating opportunities for girls to be heard, supported and empowered to take the lead. When girls are recognised not only as people affected by climate change but as leaders in responding to it, climate action becomes more inclusive, relevant and rooted in lived experience.
2. How do programmes like GLACC and PTTC help girls move from learning about an issue to actually doing something about it?
Both programmes are designed around the idea that knowledge is most powerful when young people can apply it. Rather than simply learning about climate change or plastic pollution, participants explore issues through practical, interactive non-formal education, develop skills and then use what they have learned to take action.
GLACC, for example, helps girls and young women understand climate change and its gender dimensions, connect those issues to their own lives and communities, and develop community action projects. Participants can share their learning with others, helping knowledge travel beyond the individual learner and into families, communities and the wider Movement. The programme also provides pathways for young women to develop advocacy skills and engage at national and global levels.
PTTC follows a similar progression around plastic pollution. Participants can begin by examining their own relationship with plastic, then working with others to create change in their schools and communities and eventually scale their efforts. Its Wave Makers level takes this further through intensive advocacy training, equipping them to engage decision-makers and advocate for policy and systemic change. The peer-to-peer model means that one young person’s learning can reach many others, turning individual learning into collective action. This is the case of Murielle from Madagascar, she created her own association just after she attended the wave makers training. Now she is still bringing young people together through HARP (Helping Ambohidratrimo by Recycling Plastics), which she founded in 2021. She began by organising regular meetings to raise awareness of plastic pollution and build a network of young people committed to taking action. Within its first few months, HARP had attracted 1,800 Facebook followers without paid promotion. Five years later, its page continues to share opportunities and activities, including youth awareness events, clean-up efforts and training for its members. Murielle’s journey shows how the skills and confidence gained through Wave Makers can grow into sustained, youth-led action beyond the programme.
3. WAGGGS’ Theory of Change talks about girls growing as confident leaders and agents of change. How do you see that transformation happening through climate programmes?
Climate programmes create a practical space for girls to experience leadership rather than simply learn about it. A girl may begin by learning about climate change and its impacts, then identify an issue affecting her community, develop a response, bring others into that action and eventually use her experience to influence people with decision-making power.
GLACC supports this journey by combining climate education, community action and advocacy. Girls are encouraged to identify solutions that make sense in their own contexts and to take ownership of the action they lead. Over time, these experiences can build confidence, problem-solving skills, communication skills and the ability to work with others.
PTTC provides similar opportunities through its different levels of engagement. The programme has supported young people to move from changing personal behaviours to mobilising their communities and advocating for broader change.
These examples show that leadership does not always begin in a formal position. It can begin with a young person identifying a problem, bringing people together and deciding to do something about it. As Alicia, a PTTC Advocacy Champion from Kenya, put it: “Empowered youth can reshape systems, restore ecosystems, and drive circular economies from the grassroots.”
4. How do you support girls and young women to take their experiences and community action into advocacy and policy spaces?
Community action gives girls and young women the opportunity to bring lived experience, evidence of what is happening locally, and practical examples of what communities can do into lived spaces. WAGGGS’ programmes help participants build the skills to turn those experiences into messages, campaigns and engagement with decision-makers.
Through GLACC, participants learn about advocacy and can lead community projects, while a select group receives deeper advocacy training and opportunities to engage in national campaigns and international spaces such as the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) and the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA). This creates a pathway from local action to wider influence.
PTTC’s Wave Makers model similarly provides intensive advocacy training, with participants equipped to engage decision-makers and advocate for policy and systemic changes to address plastic pollution. The emphasis is on helping young people understand who has influence, communicate their asks and build support for change.
Importantly, lived experience remains at the heart of this work. As Charity , an Advocacy Champion from Kenya, reflected after participating in global environmental decision-making spaces, the experience provided new knowledge, skills and networks that she could carry forward into her advocacy. These opportunities help ensure that girls and young women are better equipped to shape them.
5. What is the unique role of WAGGGS’ Member Organisations in taking global climate programmes and turning them into action that responds to local realities?
Member Organisations are essential to making global programmes meaningful locally. WAGGGS is a global Movement, but climate change is experienced differently from one community to another. The priorities of a girl living with water insecurity, for example, may be very different from those of a girl dealing with flooding, plastic pollution, extreme heat, or changing agricultural conditions.
Member Organisations bring the local knowledge, relationships and networks needed to adapt programmes to these realities. They understand their communities, know how to create safe spaces for girls to participate in, and can connect learning with existing local initiatives and decision-makers. Through them, global programme approaches can be adapted rather than simply replicated.
At the same time, the Movement creates an opportunity for ideas to travel in the other direction. A solution developed by girls in one country can inspire action somewhere else; a successful advocacy approach can be shared across regions; and lessons from local implementation can strengthen programmes across the wider Movement. This two-way exchange, global learning informing local action, and local experience informing global learning, is one of WAGGGS’ greatest strengths.
6. With COP approaching, what do you most want decision-makers to hear from girls and young women?
First, girls and young women need meaningful representation and real decision-making power. Being present in a room is not the same as having the ability to influence what happens in that room. Youth participation should go beyond consultation or token representation and create genuine opportunities for young people to shape climate policies and solutions.
Second, climate action must recognise the gender dimensions of climate change. Policies need to respond to the different ways climate impacts girls and women and ensure that their lived experiences inform both adaptation and mitigation efforts.
Third, girls and young women need equitable access to the resources that allow them to act. That includes investment in education and leadership development.
Finally, decision-makers must stop viewing girls only as future leaders. They are already leading. From community projects and peer education to advocacy campaigns, girls and young women are developing solutions and mobilising others today. Climate policy should create the conditions for that leadership to grow and have lasting influence.
7. If we imagine the world five or ten years from now, what would be different if girls and young women were fully recognised and supported as climate leaders?
If girls and young women were fully recognised and supported as climate leaders, we would see a fundamental shift in who is able to shape climate solutions, from the community level to national and global decision-making spaces. Girls would have the knowledge and confidence to respond to local climate challenges, while also having meaningful opportunities to influence the policies and systems that shape their futures.
That is the ambition behind WAGGGS’ climate work - to create the conditions for girls and young women to turn knowledge into action, action into collective mobilisation, and lived experience into advocacy and influence. GLACC and PTTC offer different pathways towards this ambition, but the underlying principle is the same: when girls are given the opportunity to learn, experiment, lead and be heard, they can become powerful agents of change in their communities and beyond.