Our Summits

The Summit is our annual meeting platform which is open for all youth in the Nordic and Baltic Sea Regions. The purpose of the Summit is to strengthen our youth movement by highlighting and fostering a new generation of leadership. Together we create an inspirational atmosphere of change together with senior change-makers in intergenerational dialogues.

We started with a 2-day event. In the second year, we added some side events. Following the pandemic, we organised our third Summit online with local hubs. In 2021, we created the hybrid event ReGeneration Week, a four-day event where people participated both physically at the Åland Islands, and digitally through the streaming tool Coeo.

THE SUMMIT IS A POWERFUL PLATFORM FOR CHANGE THAT:

fosters and highlights leadership

strengthens and unites actors

demands change

builds excitement and engagement

facilitates action

All our activities are based on these five focus areas. Read more here.

"There is hope – I’ve seen it – but it does not come from the governments or corporations, it comes from the people. The people who have been unaware are now starting to wake up, and once we become aware we change. We can change and people are ready for change."

Greta Thunberg

THE 2022 REGENERATION WEEK

#ReShapeTheSystem

ReGeneration Week 2022 was held between the 26.08.22 - 01.09.22 with a packed programme of over sixty hours of workshops, dialogues, and cultural events in Mariehamn, Åland. It was attended by 126 attendees, including over 30 senior change-makers from business, government and the third sector.

The theme of ReGeneration Week was ReShape the System. Building on the learnings from ReGeneration Week 2021, a group of ten youth from around the region spent the intervening year working together to form of position paper on the most important systemic changes that need to happen in our region to make it sustainable. These were structured by UNEP’s Anatomy of Action:

Food
Move
Stuff
Money
Fun

And reviewed and edited by sustainability experts in the field from our Partner Network.

Curious to see what happened during the ReGeneration Week, what was the final outcome of the summit? Click the button below to see the summary of the Position Paper prepared by young people during the ReGeneration Week 2022!

Position Paper RGW 22 Summary

THE 2021 REGENERATION WEEK

#ReThinkingTheSystem

Following the success of the three previous Summits, an extended version called the ReGeneration Week was created in 2021. The ReGeneration Week 2021 was a hybrid event that took place between August 28-31, and where people participated both physically on the Åland Islands and through the streaming tool Coeo. The ReGeneration Week provided an international meeting place for intergenerational dialogues for a sustainable system change.

The ReGeneration Week 2021 was built upon the Anatomy of Action toolkit, which is an initiative from the United Nations Environment Program and its five domains stuff, food, money, move, and fun. The Anatomy of Action framework outlines the top-level changes any individual can make to support the global shift to sustainability. The sessions that were held at the ReGeneration Week 2021 provided insights and knowledge on how youth can push decision-makers to make decisions that enable sustainable lifestyles so that we can sustain the systems that every single living thing on Earth needs to survive and thrive.

The theme for the ReGeneration Week 2021 was "ReThinking The System", which highlights the need of a sustainable recovery after the pandemic. ReGeneration Week 2021 offered interactive lectures and workshops, intergenerational dialogues, and provided tools to contribute to a more sustainable life in connection to the five different domains in Anatomy of Action. ReGeneration Week culminated with a gala, where a Declaration, that the participants of ReGeneration Week were working on during the sessions, was handed over to decision-makers such as the EU Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius.

Some of the speakers at ReGeneration Week were Fairtrade Norway, Nordic Circular Hotspot, Fridays for Future, Greenpeace and John Nurminen Foundation, among others.

The ReGeneration Week 2021 gathered hundreds of youth from the globe that participated both physically and digitally. Some of the sessions, and the ReGeneration Week gala was live-streamed at Yle Areenan, and you can still watch them, just click the button below!

Yle Areenan

Curious to see what happened during the ReGeneration Week, what sessions were held, and other activities that took place? Click the button below to see the agenda for the ReGeneration Week 2021!

Agenda RGW 21

PARTNER UP WITH US

THE PAST SUMMITS.

The Summit of 2018 was our first meeting that served as a starting point for active participation in the movement. During the Summit, we focused on creating a safe, trusting atmosphere in which we learn from each other in our work towards a sustainable future. Over 110 participants took part in the two-day programme in Mariehamn on the Åland islands.

The main theme of the Summit in 2018 was the SDG 12 of the UN 2030 Agenda: Sustainable Consumption and Production. SDG12 is the goal where the Nordic and Baltic Sea regions countries have major shortcomings. Also, this goal was identified as an important discussion topic by several youth councils and youth-oriented organisations.

The sessions of the Summit focused on different sub-themes related to the goal which enabled the participants to delve into questions that are closest to their heart and where they feel that they can make an impact. The actors making the agenda content possible were SIANI Youth, Baltic University Programme, Emmaus Åland, Zero Waste Latvia, BSSSC, Energy Crossroads Denmark, CBSS, Filippa K, Stockholm Environment Institute, LSU/NABO, IKEA, SDSN Youth as well as several volunteers.

During the last day of the Summit, the participants adopted a manifesto in the plenary hall of the Åland parliament. It consists of a vision, a demand section and a commitment section. The manifesto has since then served as the common strategic document for the movement's advocacy.

By continuing to look for and implement solutions to reach the manifesto's vision on sustainable consumption and production, the 2019 Summit investigated its link to climate action. The agenda was crafted in a way that was linked to the manifesto's commitments and demands on a practical level. Actors as the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Åland Peace institute, Medveten konsumtion (Responsible Consumption), Green Liberty, Zero Waste movement in Estonia, UN Youth of Finland, Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm Environment Institute, the City of Mariehamn, Åland University of Applied Sciences, Council of the Baltic Sea States and Ålandbanken made the Summit a success. In total, 200 people were engaged in the second Summit.

As a side event to the Summit, the"HållbArt festival" also aimed at the general public. This was a cooperation with a range of local partners. It was decided that this add-on to the Summit was to continue in the future. Another side event was arranged in a partnership with Swedish Radio Baltic Sea Festival. There, the chair of the ReGeneration 2030 movement Tatiana Lanshina participated in a live streamed talk which was aired to thousands of viewers.

In 2020, following the pandemic, the Summit was held digitally with up to 170 active participants and around 250 participants including the local hubs. The local hubs were physical meeting spots arranged with our partners. They were held in Krakow, Greifswald, Reykjavik, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Tallinn, Vilnius, St Petersburg and Kiev. Among the speakers were Paula Lehtomäki, General Secretary of the Nordic Council of Ministers, Tony Addison, Professor of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, as part of a workshop organised by UN Youth of Finland, Annika Lepistö, member of the Nordic Youth delegation and Advisory group for Biodiversity and Anton Zaitsev, PR Manager at the NGO Clean Games. Alberto Giacometti from Nordregio and the BeUBio project also hosted an inspiring panel of young entrepreneurs from all over the region. ReGeneration 2030 also announced and officially launched their partnership with the collaboration platform ACTER with a keynote by founder Emil Vincentz. Also, the Nordic Institute on Åland organised "HållbArt" - this time a live online festival. Covering 13 countries and autonomous regions and spanning four time zones, the participants were still able to experience the regional diversity which made the Summit a powerful experience!