LCOY Ghana 2025: Managing Ghana's Official Youth Climate Conference

On 19 September 2025 the Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) Ghana 2025 took place at the R. S. Amegashie Auditorium, University of Ghana. LCOY Ghana is the country's official youth climate conference under YOUNGO, the official youth constituency of the UNFCCC. This edition was organised by the United Youth Initiative for Africa (UNIYIA) and Gen Green, under the theme "Review, Reset: Empowering Youth for Ghana's Climate Future". I served on the steering committee as Conference Manager.

Over 500 young leaders, civil society groups and policymakers registered for the conference.

Background

LCOYs are national youth climate conferences held under the YOUNGO framework. Their outputs feed formally into the UNFCCC process, which means the conference is expected to produce a credible national youth position rather than only a day of discussion. That places weight on how the conference is planned, who it reaches, and how its results are recorded.

The steering committee

The conference was delivered by a steering committee with defined roles:

• Noah Bugre - Convener
• Romeo Tweneboah Koduah - Conference Manager
• Monalisa Kayper-Tackie - Lead, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
• Elisha M. - Programs Lead
• Ishmael Barfi - Communications Lead

My role as Conference Manager

As Conference Manager I was responsible for the planning and delivery of the conference, coordinating the work of the steering committee and volunteers so that a convening of over 500 registrants ran as one event. For a national youth conference the scale matters, because a youth position carries weight in proportion to the number of young people who helped shape it.

The conference also connects to the wider policy record, including the Ghana Youth Climate Action Roadmap (GYCAR) 2025-2030 and the National Youth Climate Statement.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning

This edition was built with a monitoring and evaluation framework from the start. In the weeks before the event, Monalisa Kayper-Tackie designed and implemented the M&E framework together with Noah Bugre and me. The framework set out how success would be measured, how feedback loops would be structured, and how lessons from this year could inform future editions.

Monalisa trained and supervised a volunteer monitoring team, which tracked each phase of the event, from participation and session quality to post-event reflections.

What the evaluation found

The evaluation found that LCOY continues to act as a catalyst for youth empowerment, linking climate action, innovation and opportunity. It also identified some dissemination challenges, which are a clear point for improvement in the next edition. Having the evaluation in place means those lessons are documented rather than left to memory.

It was also good to see delegates from the previous year's edition return, which says something about the continuity the conference is building.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my fellow steering committee members, Noah Bugre, Monalisa Kayper-Tackie, Elisha M. and Ishmael Barfi, for their leadership and teamwork; to the volunteer team; to UNIYIA and Gen Green for organising the conference; to YOUNGO; and to every delegate who registered and took part.

Photographs: LCOY Ghana 2025 / Monalisa Kayper-Tackie.