CHE at the Copenhagen summit

So what did CHE actually do there...?

In December during the Copenhagen 2010 Climate Summit, we presenced the meshwork www.2020climatesolutions.org.
With some 40 volunteers for ten days we hosted conversations with people from all over the world. What piece of the puzzle do you hold? was the question we asked the hundreds who came into our space. The meshwork is set up to create greater coherence, collaboration and acceleration between the thousands of people and organisations active in the field of climate change. The photo gives an impression of the atmosphere we created and the people we met.

On our last day in Kopenhagen, where for 10 days we had been with the 2020 Climate Solutions Meshwork, James, a new volunteer joined us. Even when he understood that this was the day of the final harvesting and breaking up, he wanted to be there. We had been hosting conversationsfor ten days. With a total of 40 volunteers, all paying their own way and getting a token remuneration, aged 17-67, all having felt called to come when Leonie had drawn on the networks of the Hub, Arft of Hosting, CHE, R2, Aiesec - we had a different crew every day.
In the morning we sat in circle, checking in with 'How do you feel now?" before stating our purpose of being there and our principles of working. The purpose, of course, was to engage people in conversation so they might come to see that to reach the '80 by 2020' goal, we all need to mesh together, each of us doing exactly what is ours to do. The question on our sweatshirts said it all: What piece of the puzzle do you hold?

We had hosted conversations of angry activists, our volunteers deftly bringing them from anger to concern to commitment. In our space two Ethiopian men met, one who had planted a million trees in his home country, the other the first to study agriculture and actually start a farm and growing food organically, both named Green Heroes by the president of their country. "You make magic here," they said to us and we hosted them in making plans together like we did for David and Simon from Kenya. We hosted schoolkids, single-issue activists, farmers, scientists, youth workers from all over the world and curious Danes who were coming to see what was going on. We had grown the meshwork from 400 participants to over 1,200. We had all been telling our story on camera for programmes we would never see. We had been working intensely with Yourclimate tv and with the organisers of Klimaforum09 ( http://www.klimaforum09.org/).

Each day Peter or Anne-Marie had held a talk about the 2020 Climate Solutions Meshwork. We invited people to fill in their profile on the meshwork (www.2020climatesolutions.org) and make available to others what they have learned and done that works. Most people immediately got it. "This is what I've been waiting for." Morel had convinced us to add another element, so we had a wall where the meshwork was printed out and people could rate their country. Many took the time to do this, some spent hours at that wall, engrossed in conversation, becoming aware of the level of progress in their country.
We had ended the day in circle, too. "How do you feel now?" Conversations had been intense, feelings were triggered, also our 'soft' approach shook some of the conditioning of how to work purposefully - these circles were rich and rewarding.

So on this last day James joined us for the first time. He sat as a witness in our completion circle. We shared what we had become aware of in our Meshworking space. We felt how deeply personal climate change is, even if from the little we gathered from what was happening 'over there at the Bella Center' it was being dealt with in a professional, impersonal way by those seemingly in power. In us the issue had come home. We felt in our bones, in our hearts the connection to earth, to all those who had come to our space - we felt their concern, their commitment, their love. We shared and we listened. We gave one of the candles that had been in our midst to Juan Carlos, the Mexican in our midst, after he spoke of how he was going to take this to next year's gathering in his home land. In the end we invited James to speak. "I was in India last week," he said, "where I saw the devastation of climate change. And I can live with what didn't happen at COP15, because of what you did here."

More information on Peter Merry's blog.