Amplifying the voices of young people on the global stage

Children and Youth Pavilion at COP28

After its debut in Sharm El-Sheikh at COP27, the Children and Youth Pavilion was a fixture at COP28 in Dubai, providing a dedicated space for children and young people at the conference to host events, facilitate workshops, hold networking sessions, and convene policy briefings.

Greenhouse Communications delivered an integrated communications campaign for the Pavilion across media and social media with the goal of amplifying youth voices and perspectives to influence climate policy and decision making at COP. Created by the youth, for the youth, the Pavilion and its communications were intergenerational, intersectional, multi-stakeholder, and inclusive.

Results and impact:

Amplifying the voices of young people

Challenge: children and youth will suffer the most from the climate crisis

Although children and youth have contributed the least to the climate crisis, they are and will continue to suffer the most from governments’ failure to take urgent action. The climate crisis poses a catastrophic threat to the lives and livelihoods of children and youth. Despite being disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis and continuously calling for ambitious climate action, children and youth are often absent from climate discussions, commitments and policy-making.

Solution: create the Children and Youth Pavilion COP28

Greenhouse worked alongside six institutional partners and 22 youth-led organisations to create the Children and Youth Pavilion. We delivered an integrated communications campaign for the Pavilion, including managing the social media channels, creating a messaging toolkit, media strategy and engagement, coordinating a 19-person spokespeople programme, and coordinating interviews on the ground at COP28 to ensure young voices were heard.

Results: over 276 media articles mentioning the Children and Youth Pavilion

Over 276 media articles mentioned the Children and Youth Pavilion or our spokespeople, highlights included BBC News, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky News Arabia, Associated Press, BBC World Service, EFE and France 24. Across social media channels, our content generated +138,000 impressions, +6,909 engagements and resulted in 882 new followers.

Impact: children and youth were at the heart of COP28

Children and youth were at the heart of COP28 with 12.8% of all COP28 coverage, or 109,000 articles related to children or youth. The 19 pavilion spokespeople were quoted 232 times in the media showcasing the importance of including youth voices and perspectives in discussions around COP. Youth held climate leaders accountable throughout COP28, demanding on social media to act now as #LaterIsTooLate.

What we did

Social assets

In the run-up to and during COP28, the Greenhouse team managed the Children and Youth Pavilion’s Instagram and X channels.

We designed and created a series of creative assets, liaised with youth climate influencers such as Vanessa Nakate, Xiye Bastida, AY Young and Elizabeth Wathuti to collaborate on posts, created educational resources for youth and built an engaged online community.

Across social media channels, our content generated +138,000 impressions, +6,909 engagements and resulted in 882 new followers.

Highlight film

Youth Day Film

Greenhouse partnered with Earth Minutes, a youth-led creative production studio.

We produced content direct from the COP28 Children and Youth Pavilion, including daily highlight reels, a powerful youth demand film, storyteller reels and photography.

Overall, we produced 27 short films, which accounted for a third of all overall social impressions.

Our youth day film achieved 5,609 views, 1,026 likes and a 20.6% engagement rate.

Optimised landing page

We worked with Maker Change Studio to design the Children and Youth Pavilion website, a single point of truth to host all essential information on the Pavilion, including our key demands, our values, our spokespeople, a gallery of photography and safeguarding information.

Style guidelines

We worked with Maker Change Studio and the Children and Youth Pavilion Steering Committee to co-create and refresh the branding to feature updates relevant to COP28 (e.g. thematic areas and iconographic nods to the host country of the United Arab Emirates)

We also designed the physical branding for the pavilion itself, developing a physical logo to stand outside the pavilion, the walls and the podium.

Media coverage:

Top stories included:

What our clients say:

“I’ve been incredibly impressed by the team’s professionalism, dedication, stamina, and ongoing positivity throughout a project that is complex, multi- stakeholder led, and fast-paced. Greenhouse did an excellent job at COP and have had a great attitude and I’m grateful for the work they’ve done on it.”

Mira Torres – Senior Climate Analyst, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF)