On May 1, the Call to Action of youth to the G7 leaders was launched. The one-page document, which contains youth recommendations for gender equality, the environment and the future of work, is the culmination of many proposals, deliberations and cups of coffee. We will see the document’s full impact in a month’s time, when Prime Minister Trudeau delivers it to the annual meeting of the G7 heads of state, which is hosted by Canada this year.

Ottawa, Canada’s capital, welcomed us with snowy -5 degrees Celsius weather for the G7 Youth Summit (Y7). After being held up by a snow storm in Toronto’s airport for a day and losing my checked luggage in the process, my fresh-out-of-Abu Dhabi body did not cope very well in the cold. Thankfully, I barely needed to step outside for many of the proceedings — my schedule consisted of being in the conference center from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. And yet, I can hardly complain. Collaborating with 31 incredibly talented and passionate delegates from the G7 nations and the EU gave me hope for the future for the first time in a while.

Preparation for the Call to Action began well before the summit. We were tasked with somehow representing the voices of millions of young people on issues as important and imminent as climate change, gender equality and building inclusive economies. Thus, preceding the summit, we conducted over 40 consultations with youth in our various home countries to gauge what the prevailing sentiments were. For me, this involved Skyping previous delegates for Japan who worked on environmental issues, hearing policy recommendations from members of Climate Youth Japan and reading various online youth advocacy efforts on environmental topics. We based our country position cards on this research, shared these cards with other delegates, and discussed our policies over Slack for a few weeks.

When we arrived in Ottawa and could finally put faces to names and discuss in person, our main task was to highlight the policies that should be proposed and discussed first. On the first day we had to cut down our theme focus areas to only four topics. In the Climate Change and Environment working group, we narrowed the themes down to decarbonization, adaptation, waste management and oceans after merging various topics and advocating for the importance of some issues over others. Over the next few days we finalized the policy recommendations, edited the policies and re-edited them based on hours of fruitful debate. Although we were representing our countries, we were reminded multiple times each day to think about the voices that were not at the table. We were joined by indigenous Canadian observers who shared their stories with us. I found the whole experience surprisingly humbling.

I had come to the summit with doubts that maybe the Y7 would be a ploy to satisfy the youth by allowing them to play a privileged game of pretend G7. In retrospect, however, I believe that this year’s Y7 was a game-changing summit. Firstly, the Canadian government showed huge commitments to collaborating with the Y7 organizers, Young Diplomats of Canada, and integrating the Y7 as an official engagement group of the G7. Prime Minister Trudeau is also the Minister of Youth, and we were surprised by a video message from him as well as a visit from the first lady, Sophie Trudeau. Throughout the summit, we engaged with several Canadian ministers as well as Peter Schiefke, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. We also had an epic meeting with all eight personal representatives of the heads of state, known as the G7 Sherpas, in which we received feedback on the policy recommendations we had formed. Given the rather homogenous demographics of the Sherpas, I realized why we need voices from a diverse group of young people in these political circles. This especially resonated when our majority female group discussed gender equality policies with the Sherpas — seven out of eight of whom were male.

This article is not intended to simply be an account of my experiences at the G7 Youth Summit. I firmly believe that this year’s Call to Action is unlike any previous Y7 document. Instead of the usual pages of recommendations, this year’s one-page text highlights only one topic from each theme and proposes specific timelines to ensure that each policy goal is accomplished. For example, by next year we will call upon each G7 government to appoint an empowered government Special Advisor for Gender-based Violence, ban all microplastics in cosmetics and articulate that data privacy is a human right. Many of the problems we tackle today are relatively recent developments that need new solutions, and as youth, many fears we have about the future are not as salient to our current political leaders.

With only one month to go until the G7 summit, I hope that these recommendations that aim to be simultaneously bold, pragmatic and inclusive make it not only to the ears of the G7 leaders, but also onto the paper of the Leader’s Statement as actionable policies that the G7 countries adopt.