As we get ready to leave Baku, Azerbaijan for our long journey home and reflect back on our time here, I am filled with mixed emotions about what we experienced.

Of course, on one hand, I am frustrated and filled with dread about the fact that our world’s nations don’t seem to act with any sense of urgency about climate change and how it’s impacting people. On the other hand, I am so grateful to have met the wonderful people on our delegation and am reinvigorated to go home and know that there’s such good work being done in Minnesota that involves true community power and is justice-centered. I have also been delighted to meet the youth leaders that I know will be able to keep their morality and principles no matter what life throws at them.

One of the last sessions we attended was the “Gender Just Climate Solutions Awards” where we watched three very courageous women win awards for their climate solutions in their communities. I was so happy for them and it was easy to see how much they cared for their people and their natural environment. Francesca Trotman and Yudmila Chunguane of Love the Oceans in Mozambique won an award for teaching their community how to swim, dive, and ocean-literacy. Isabel Prestes Fonseca of Zág Institute won an award for their work on the reforestation and preservation of traditional knowledge around the Araucaria tree, known as Zág, in Brazil.

What impacted me the most was that what these women were doing in their communities wasn’t overly-inflated or complicated projects, they were relatively simple solutions to what their community truly needed. I think that too often, when I think of climate change and how it’s going to or is already impacting our communities, that I tend to start thinking too big about what is actually needed. These women are centered on what was missing in their communities and sought to fill those needs.

I think the biggest lesson of COP29 for me is that governments and even climate activists can very easily lose what it means to be collective, justice-centered, and solution-oriented. Taking up a lot of space, being loud, and not welcoming to all is the norm of COP meetings. Knowing that the Gender Justice Climate Solutions Awards was run by women and for women really helped recenter me after spending time in a patriarchal country. I am grateful to my ancestors and my family for being matriarchal and always keeping family, love, gentleness, celebrating often, and making sure every single person is heard at the center of life.

Jen is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

Jen (Nape Mato Win) is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. Since the KXL pipeline threatened treaty territory of the Dakotas, Jen has been passionate about a world beyond fossil fuels and centering Indigenous voices, culture, and history. Jen is also a beadwork artist, Indigenous gardener, and received a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Augsburg University. She believes that positive cultural and ancestral based knowledge are vital components to Indigenous resiliency. Currently, Jen is the Environmental Justice and Stewardship Programs Manager at Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi, an East Side St. Paul, Minnesota – Indigenous led environmental nonprofit that stewards the sacred site known as Wakan Tipi.

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Final Reflection of COP29