Govanhill Roma Youth Project: Our First March
“We waved our Roma flag in the air with bright smiles on our faces, shouting as loud as we could for climate justice”
For many members of the Govanhill Roma Youth Project, the Global Day of Action during COP26 was their first time attending such a large protest. One participant, 16 year-old Natalia Balogova shared her experience.
Natalia on the day of the march. Photo courtesy of Nola O’Neill.
By Natalia Balagova
When our group, the Govanhill Roma Youth Project, heard that COP26 was being held in Glasgow, we took it as a chance to be heard, a chance to come together with the world, and a chance to help create immediate and necessary changes. Making a change quickly can be difficult and overwhelming but we need direct action. We need a change.
The members of the Govanhill Roma Youth Project decided to make our own banner. Luckily, one of our youth workers, Charlie Reischl, helps out at Print Clan, an arts studio based in the city centre. Here, we were able to make our banner by screen printing. This is done by forcing ink onto a surface through a screen to create a picture or pattern.
We decided on the words ‘ACT NOW’ because we all believe something needs to be done before it is too late. We had this written in English, Slovakian, Romanian and Romanese. We were all happy with the way it turned out and doing this banner made us all so much more excited for the big day.
The banner that the group screen printed. Photo courtesy of Nola O’Neill.
In the week leading up to the event, we finalised our plans for the protest. We knew there would be thousands of people and we were positive that we needed to do a risk assessment just to be on the safe side. Also, we thought up some make-up ideas and settled on doing worlds on our foreheads. We also used green/blue eyeshadow to stay with our theme.
On the morning of the event, we got prepared at the office. Here we took loads of photos and posted a video on our social media to let everyone know we were ready to march and to be heard. We got everything we needed and off we went, for most of us this was our first time marching, but would also probably be the biggest ever for any of us. When we got there we were all astonished by the amount of people.
We came up with some chants and there we were, living our best lives, holding our banner we had made. We waved our Roma flag in the air with bright smiles on our faces, shouting as loud as we could for climate justice with big cameras all around us. By the end of the march all of us were so tired but we stayed till the end.
Climate justice is so important because it affects all of our futures. But when everything we do has an impact on the planet, where do we even start? We can come together to protest but, at the end of the day, will it all be worth it? Is there finally going to be a change made? Or, are the world leaders going to ignore everything?
To continue our fight for climate justice at a grassroots level, we as an organisation thought it would be helpful to have a session about climate change at Amaro Clubos. This is a weekly group that we host every Wednesday evening where young people can come to chill and do different activities.
A session at Amaro Clubos on climate change would be a good opportunity to talk to young people about how important climate change is. Furthermore, we let the young attendees know that really our future is in our hands and that we all have a chance to help save our planet.
Hopefully after they are aware about the importance of climate change, they will take responsibility to help as best as they can.
The Govanhill Roma Youth Project (GRYP) is a youth project where young people and youth workers collaborate to organise a range of opportunities for Roma young people to take action on their interests, needs and concerns. It is funded through The Health Lottery Scotland (People’s Health Trust) and supported by the Community Renewal Trust