News from the environmental field! Our former volunteer, Fatima Azadli, has been part of COP29 – at the very heart of it, helping coordinate the Green Zone programme in Baku. Her path there started right here in Thuringia with our PLANET4B Learning Community.
What is COP29?
Find out here! 🤓
COP29 was the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Baku, Azerbaijan (November 2024). It’s the annual gathering of countries (the “Parties”) to the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement to review progress and negotiate climate commitments—including finance, mitigation, and adaptation. The venue is split into two main areas: the Blue Zone (UNFCCC-managed, where official negotiations and side events occur) and the Green Zone (host-country managed, open to a broader public of civil society, youth, business, and media). COP29 also advanced work on a new climate-finance goal.
When Fatima joined Culture Goes Europe (CGE) in Erfurt as an ESC volunteer, she stepped into a buzzing community of young people learning by doing — engaging in conversations, designing local activities and co-creating ideas. What began as hands-on support in CGE to our projects soon turned into a crash course on capacity building: stakeholder mapping, program design, facilitation, and the day-to-day discipline of turning a plan into impact.
Fatima joined the PLANET4B Learning Community and was present at the kickoff in Hohenfelden, Thuringia, where we piloted an early biodiversity-governance game with young people from urban backgrounds. After this the Learning Community often traded meeting rooms for a forest hike, getting to know native species and the stories they tell about local ecosystems. That mix of play, place, and practice became a key principle of the group’s engagement.
Now, being back at home, Fatima put that principle to work at COP29 in Baku, taking on the role of Program Coordinator in the Green Zone. Her remit was both strategic and operational: aligning sessions with daily themes, pre-briefing speakers and program owners, and — when the show was live — synchronizing with operations, media, venue, and protocol teams to keep everything running. The capacities she honed at CGE — agenda-building, inclusive facilitation, quick risk-spotting, and clear communication across cultures— translated directly to a high-stakes, many-moving-parts environment.
Volunteering with Culture Goes Europe e.V. was invaluable. I gained diverse, hands-on experiences and concrete tools that accelerated my growth as an early-career professional. The competencies I developed translated directly into my work when I returned, and the encouraging environment made meaningful project work possible.
– Fatima Azadli
Fatima’s journey shows what ESC volunteering can unlock: confidence, professional readiness, and a bridge from local civic engagement to global climate action. Our ESC project in Erfurt hosted four individual volunteers and prioritized environmental action alongside inclusion and digital practices—an ecosystem where Fatima’s skills could spark and scale.
If you’re considering a volunteering path, take a page from Fatima’s story: start where you are, build with others, and let your next step be bigger than your last.
Fatima Azadli was part of the Community Goes Europe 5 (2023-1-DE04-ESC51-VTJ-000128222), a volunteering project funded within the European Solidarity Corps of the European Union.
