A GREEN initiative will allocate part of a multi-million pound budget to create a 'Youth Climate Summit' for Cumbria.

On behalf of the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership, Cumbria Action for Sustainability (CAfS) was awarded £2.5 million from the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund for a five-year Zero Carbon Cumbria project.

And thousands of this budget has been allocated to the creation of an annual conference to work with young people to deliver their climate priorities.

This includes a Youth Climate Action Programme to support, empower and skill up young people in Cumbria to have their voices heard and to influence those in power to listen and act.

The Youth Climate Action Programme includes a series of annual Youth Climate Summits with schools across Cumbria, bringing children, young people and teachers together.

Youth Steering Committees will help set priorities for the summits including the topics covered and the format of each summit.

As part of the overarching objective to help young people articulate their hopes and concerns for the environment and their own futures, CafS is asking for a contractor to help organise and deliver the youth climate summits in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

CAfS is co-chair of the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership which brings together more than 80 organisations spanning the public, private and third sectors, working towards the shared aim of making Cumbria the UK’s first carbon-neutral county by 2037.

On behalf of the ZCCP, CAfS has been awarded £2.5 million from the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund, for a five-year Zero Carbon Cumbria project, a varied programme of activity throughout Cumbria which will run to 2025.

A provisional date of Thursday, October 20, 2022 has been agreed for the 2022 summit and a venue in Carlisle has been identified. It is anticipated that this summit will focus on primary schools.