Who we are?
Fridays For Future is a group of active youth, who fight against climate change every day. Majority of the movement consists of secondary and high school students, although university students and older activists are also involved.
The constantly escalating climate crisis is a real threat to human civilization- halting it is the most important task for humanity in the 21st century.
We demand a climate policy that would rise to the height of needs.
Fridays For Future Estonia – all people, who strike with us in the name of stopping the climate crisis.
Our history
In August 2018 Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg decided to sit infront of the Swedish Parliament every schoolday for three weeks in order to protest the governments inaction on resolving the climate crisis. Greta continued to strike every Friday and covered it on social media, from where it spread amongst students all over the world and the Fridays For Future movement begun. Inspired by the international movement three young people from Tallinn went on strike on the 8th of March 2019. On the following Friday, the 15th of March Estonia took part in the international climate strike, alltogether about 1500 people took part in Tallinn, Tartu, Paide and Rakvere.
It soon became clear that one strike wasn’t going to make a difference. Because we wish to see actual changes and to insure a sustainable future, we will be out striking every Friday until the Estonian Government guarantees in cooperation with the world authorities a safe way to stay below 1,5°C global warming.
In cooperation with young people from Latvia and Lithuania in April 2019 we created the Baltic climate chain. Before the European Parliament election on the 24th of May we went on strike in Tartu, Tallinn and Pärnu taking part in the Pan-European protest. Weekly strikes will continue in Tallinn and Tartu.
Today the leading topics uniting humanity are the climate crisis and the collapse of ecosystems – they affect everyone on planet Earth. Even though the movement was started by young people, anyone is welcome to support and join.
Our main but not only activity is organizing protests. In addition we negotiate with politicians, organize climate-themed information evenings, take part in discussion panels, talk about climate related topics in non-governmental organizations and schools and are also hands-on. All to make the world a better place.
We don’t tolerate racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, ageist or other discriminatory behaviour. Everyone has a right to create a local branch or join one that already exists, you just have to follow the operating principles recognized in the movement. The Fridays For Future movement is decentralized, which means that we operate without central management. Local branches are autonomous in their activities.
From the government we demand an immediate and radical action plan on tackling the climate crisis. Which political party’s representatives do this is of no significance to us – we are political but not party political. You don’t need a political ideology to care for your living environment, it is something every reasoning person is able to do.
We don’t follow the guidelines of any other organization. But we do accept support from organizations whose values are compatible with ours. We are a financially independent movement and don’t accept funding from companies and organizations who don’t support our vision or values. We try to be as transparent as possible in our activities.
To better coordinate activism activities we have created MTÜ Loodusvõlu. In our activities we follow the code of ethics of non-governmental organizations. You can read the statute of the MTÜ here.