A morning at the leader factory.

Luscious gardens, palm trees, expansive green courtyards, inviting facilities and extraordinary students. This is what one is confronted with upon entering Colegio Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR is our sister school in Lima, and is the only other high school beside SES on earth accredited to attend COP conferences.

We had the privilege to visit FDR yesterday morning. The event FDR had planned were two presentations by keynote speakers Maria Van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the IEA or International Energy Agency, and Joseph Robertson the Global Strategy Director from the Citizen’s Climate Lobby. Before the speeches began we were given a tour of the campus by an FDR freshman named Valeria. She showed us some of the sustainable systems FDR had implemented around the campus. First she brought us to a rooftop where we saw solar powered water heaters that were used to heat the FDR swimming pool. They also have a windmill on top of their library which is used to power all of the computers the library uses. A lot more is on the way because FDR recently won 50,000 dollars from the Zayed Future Energy Prize in the United Arab Emirates to finance additional sustainable development projects. They are truly leaps and bounds ahead of most schools in incorporating renewable energy. 

The speakers that we saw later in the morning were excellent. First Ms. Van der Hoeven from the IEA gave an incredibly engaging presentation on the world’s GHG emissions and what has been done over the years to understand the issue and attempt to solve it. She did an amazing job of inspiring the crowd, which was mostly high school students, into taking action in the future to make a difference in the fight against climate change. The second speaker was Joseph Robertson from Citizen Climate Lobby which is an organization that gives the general public a voice when it comes to climate change issues and policy decisions. He also gave a remarkably interesting presentation that detailed what had been done to establish the CCL and what they were doing to give common citizens a voice. Both the presentations were COP worthy, and were put on for FDR students and us is a cool, comfortable auditorium, which was welcome break from the steamy temporary structures at the COP.

Over all it was a superb morning. The student questions addressed to the speakers were extremely intelligent and interesting and the campus was beautiful. What’s more, some of the student projects taking place at FDR are very complex and impactful especially for being run by such young people. This gives me hope for the generations to come and what they will do in the future. Our visit to FDR that morning made me realize that there are some seriously committed and able young learners out there that are completely capable of changing the world.

One of FDR's beautiful open areas.

SES COP team with representatives from the UAE (right) our wonderful host Allana Rumble (center) and Valeria and FDR student (Center).

FDR's solar powered water heating system.

FDR's library windmill.