Author: Georgia Charalambides
I am sure you have been hearing the term “Fridays for future!” a lot in the past few weeks, but what does it actually mean?
Fridays for future is a trend started by a Swedish girl called Greta Thunberg. Greta started striking school every Friday by standing in front of the Swedish parliament with a poster with the caption “SKOLSTREJK FÖR KLIMATET” which is Swedish for school strike for future. She would stand in front of the parliament and hand out leaflets about climate change to create awareness. Greta started the strike as she believes that our governments are not doing enough to help stop climate change and that they do not care, as they are not destroying their future but our future. Her actions have started a worldwide trend; students are striking school on Fridays and stand in front of their parliament.
Since the start of these strikes, about 8 months ago, there have been many walk-outs of mainly high school students in countries all over the globe, for example in Germany, England, Australia, France, Kenya and we have even had one in Cape Town. On the 15 of March, there was a climate change strike in front of the Cape Town parliament building.
The message these strikes are trying to bring across is that we the students no longer see a point in getting an education, because the way our Earth is going there will be no more ‘future’ to use our education in. Many governments have recognized this message and Greta has spoken to many politicians about her strikes.
Students are hoping to get politicians to notice they will not stop until the politicians start taking care of our future and not just ignoring what is happening to our planet. They want them to stop trying to find another habitable planet and start fixing the one we have.