The SLOCAT Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) are accepting applications for the 2020 edition  of the Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport programme.

The programme seeks to build bridges between the transport community and young people to explore new perspectives by creating an interface between knowledge and policy. It will raise the capacity of young people and provide them new skills in evidence-based policy analysis for sustainable transport.

Young people are recognised as the torchbearers of sustainable development and the vanguards in the struggle against climate change. By working directly with young leaders, the transport community will empower the generation who can help foster far-reaching and unprecedented change and build long-lasting bridges with other constituencies.

Who qualifies for the Young Leaders programme?

The Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport will be recruited from a pool of high calibre young researchers, practitioners, and policy makers with a certain degree of professional experience and a track record around climate action and sustainable development. Researchers can be Master graduates or current PhD students. Practitioners are people who have recently begun to work in a relevant professional field, and young policy-makers can be any person who engages in policy-related work or advocacy (e.g., NGO, think tanks and similar or who are elected representatives).

Activities in 2019

In its first edition in 2019, the programme engaged six Young Leaders, bringing them together to help bolster the interconnections between the work of young experts and academics and the wider sustainable, low carbon transport community. These six  Young Leaders attended key gatherings of the United Nations, like the 2019 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25), and the Tenth Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF10). Besides, the Young Leaders in 2019 completed individual policy-based research activities and presented them in  a webinar.

Planned activities for 2020

The Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport will engage in analytical work with a view towards policy advocacy. Their analysis will centre around the substance and themes addressed in both the sustainable development and climate change processes on the regional and global level. The engagements intend to provide participants the opportunity to gain valuable skills and highlight their expertise at the same time.

In addition, the Young Leaders will nourish thought leadership through more interaction and collaboration with both the VREF and the SLOCAT Partnership ecosystems.

Programme Offerings

Young Leaders will engage in key activities around  international processes, thus fostering a stronger professional network, contributing to wider thought leadership and developing highly beneficial skills related to knowledge-based policy making and advocacy. Moreover, the programme will offer participants the opportunity to connect to other young, up-and-coming professionals working in the global policy space related to the wider sustainable development and climate change action movements. Finally, Young Leaders will be strongly involved in determining the ultimate activities and outputs of the programme, further ensuring benefits to intellectual l and career development.

Criteria

Suitable candidates fulfill the following criteria:

• Recently graduated from a graduate school programme or between three (3) to five (5) years of work experience in an organisation working on global climate and sustainability agendas.
• Strong interest in knowledge-based policy-making, as well as in the role transport can play in putting communities on pathways toward sustainable development and climate change action.
• Educational background in sciences and/or humanities; efforts are to be made to recruit Young Leaders beyond transport-related fields.
• Fluency in English (oral and written). Preference will be given to applicants who come from and/or focus their activities on Global South regions.

In this 2020 edition of the Programme, it is intended to recruit three participants.Interested individuals are warmly encouraged  to submit a CV and a cover letter (of not more than 600 words) answering the following question: “Which transport challenges, in your personal experience, have inspired you to be a change maker in the struggle for sustainable, low carbon transport, and how would you link this struggle to your work/research?”

The deadline for submissions is 10 April 2020.Please submit your application to Nikola Medimorec (nikola.medimorec@slocatpartnership.org). Interviews with candidates will be held in the third and fourth week of April.