This year's TUNZA Children's conference took place in Stavanger, Norway from 16th to the 20th June, 2008 focusing on the theme Creating Change. It brought together 1000 people from 105 countries, including 700 children between the ages of 10 and 14 and 300 chaperones. The children gave presentations and produced some wonderful posters on climate change and energy issues. It was a truly inspiring event and one which IPY was privileged to be a part of.



The week started off really well with a well attended IPY session focusing on IPY and climate change. Our speakers included Olav Orheim from Norwegian Research Council, Grete Hovelsrud (IPY JC member and director of CICERO), Anders Oskal (Director of International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry) in all his Sami dress, Jose Xavier (IPY Portugal), Clementine Rasquin (International Polar Foundation) and Khadijah Abdul Rahman-Sinclair (YAWA and IPY Global Community Initiative). In the audience we had teachers, educators, parents, NGO's, a great mix and the session was very well received with some great questions for our speakers at the end.

We also had a booth in the Eco village for the week which IPY shared with YAWA. We were kept very busy with local school kids visiting in the morning and the participants in the afternoon. As the Polar Land and Life day occurred whilst we were in Norway, we had organised 2 live events to connect the children and chaperones at the UNEP conference to IPY scientists studying bird health, coastal erosion and permafrost. These events were well received and recordings of these will soon be available on http://www.ipy.org
We also launched lots of virtual balloons with kids and chaperones from many countries during the week in celebration of the Polar day and you can see the global map at

http://ipy.arcticportal.org/index.php?option=com_k2&id=1607&view=item