On Sunday 4th of August over 450 climate activists from 37 European countries will be coming for FridaysForFuture European Summit. FridaysForFuture movement best know for “Youth Strike For Climate” protests although we welcome strikers of all ages and similarly on SMILE summit there will be participants from many generations and it’s not only reserved for “young” people. So in this article I will be breaking down statistics behind age of participants.

Firstly let’s take a look on proportions of activists who are coming to Lausanne and are over or under 18. According to a questionnaire which participants filled in whilst registering for an event over 57% of attendees are over the age of 18. This is a rather balanced and considering that for people from 36 countries attending requires travelling abroad, often without parents, this may be the reason why there’s slightly more “adults” on SMILE.

Next thing worth mentioning is age range of participants. Our movement often suffers from criticism that it’s build by young people only who are “inexperienced” or “easy to manipulate”. SMILE proves this criticism is wrong. The age range of our participants is 47 with the oldest activists coming to Lausanne being 58 and the youngest having only 11 years of age. This truly proves Greta Thunberg’s quote that “no one is too small to make a difference” but similarly it also proves that no one is too old.

Another thing which we’ve learned about SMILE participants is that they represent different generations. According to the same questionnaire that was mentioned before, activists that will come to Lausanne come from 4 genertions. These are:

Baby Boomers

Generation X

Millennials

Generation Z

Even though most participants are either Millennials or Generation Z. This diversity is something to be proud of and shows that climate change is issue that affects us all and we’re all equally responsible to tackle it!

Max Czekalski