The following is an update from Victoria de Leeuw, GPS Netherlands team member.

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After a good rest this summer, the Dutch GPS team started with Phase 2. Our strategy contains two tracks that will come together in the first half of 2014: orientation and creating awareness that will end in action.

The first track is raising awareness. Four organisations joined forces to bring more knowledge about the COP and awareness about climate change to the Dutch youth, in line with the European plan to create momentum around the COP. Our minister of Infrastructure & Environment, Mrs. Mansveld, has asked us to find out what the younger generation of the Netherlands think are important topic to address at the negotiations in Warsaw. We are going to give a lot of guest lectures at secondary schools where youth will think of messages they want to pass on to Mrs. Mansveld and the COP. By this we are doing two things: raising awareness about the climate summit and, very importantly, asking them to join the movement. We will offer the youth some concrete tools, like joining the next action of phase 2. Also, the volunteers that are trained are asked to join us in other actions.

In the mean time, we are still orientating and searching for the best way we can serve the climate movement in the Netherlands. There are a lot of organisations already doing so much, but for some reason we are still at the bottom of many sustainability lists. Something is going wrong now and last month we have sent out questionnaires to various parties asking them what they think is going wrong and what kind of things we can do as a GPS team. At the end of September we will have a brainstorm with people from organisations and companies in order to find out what our plan of action will be.

So, in the coming months we are going to make a plan, raise awareness, drag more people in the movement (because there is only three of us at the moment in the GPS team) and end in a big action! What that action will be we will have to find out, but it is going to be positive and will shift the power!