Vote for the youth speakers submissions – Part 5

I am 18 years old and go to school at the Duborg-Skolen, Flensburg (Germany). The school is a Danish school of the Danish minority in Northern Germany. In my free time I am scout, actually I am leader of a scout group in Husby, Germany.

I want to present you a project, called “Jord til Bord”, or in English “Earth to Table”. And this is exactly what we have done in 2011, when this project was going on, at a scout camp, called Jamborette, for 600 scouts from Denmark, Germany, Island and different other countries.

When the idea was invented in January 2011, the plan was to make an organic day on a scout camp that summer. So we, the Danish Scout Association in Southslesvig (DSS), did, but bigger. So we get organic food to feed the scouts on the camp all the ten days, we were there. We also wanted to grow our own vegetables on a field near the camp area. We were so lucky that one of the leaders has much experience, because of her job. In spring 2011 we seeded the plants together whit the participants to do their hands dirty and to let them feel an ownership to the project. It has been a huge success!

I was involved as the technician in the “Jord-til-Bord”-project. I did the layout for the cooking book, designed the icon for the project and all the other small things which have to be done. During the camp I helped with packing the food and organize the transport of the food to the scout groups.

I am a lady aged of 24 years. I am studying a Bachelor’s Degree at Bindura University of Science Education. My studies are mainly based on Environmental Education in Forestry and its environment. The aspect of Climate change has caused the programme to be of importance nationally and globally.

I am in the fourth year which is the final year. In my third year I had the opportunity to work as a forester at a parastatal company known as Allied Timbers of Zimbabwe where I got the chance to put theoretical work to practice.

As a Youth, I would like to make a difference by participating in all programs that aims to combat the increasing Climate change and Environment. “Everyone talks about Climate Change but few do anything about it”.

Local people have social needs and values they derive from natural forests. These were values also values of the Chakohwa community which were overridden by the mining sector.

Chakohwa is found in a dry hot area where Baobab trees (Adonsonii digitata) are mostly found. The local people construct mats, chairs, hats and bags which they export to South Africa for a living. However a blood diamond was found in the region and the Mines and Mineral Act overrode the Forest Act in this case. Trees were felled during extraction of the diamond and land degradation occurred severely. The gullies could fit full-sized cattle.

Environmental Conservation students from Bindura University could not stand the erosion, degraded ground, deforestation, dust storms and poverty that were increasing in the area. They asked for permission to reclaim the land after mining. After so many criticism and investigations, the team finally reclaimed the gullies and re-vegetated the area.

Today, Chakohwa is a hot spring for small wildlife animals such as bush barks, bush pigs, and rabbits and the community has acknowledged the system by joining the exercise. The promotion of natural resource conservation will help overcome the problem of climate change and need youths that can act to the situation.

Am a young woman born on the 1st of May 1990 currently 23 years old. Am currently studying for my honours degree in Natural Resources Management bachelor of Environmental Science. Am a young woman with a huge passion for the environment and would work hard to ensure its sustainability. Was attached at the Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe as a Forest Extension Officer, environmental monitoring and protection was my key task.

In most parts of Zimbabwe, rural livelihoods are predicated upon people’s accessibility to natural resources such as land, water and biotic resources. Improving their lives and meeting their needs has been the most crucial and priority task by most developing countries and also rural communities in Zimbabwe.
Many stakeholders are more interested in the management rather than the sustainable management of natural resources, enhancing livelihoods and food security among rural communities thus paving way for projects like beekeeping. Beekeeping is the occupation of owning and breeding bees for honey and other products like wax and many others.

The realisation of the value of protecting and conservation of forests through beekeeping has led some youths in areas of Zimbabwe like Chigondo in Hwedza to initiate and implement the project. In this region beekeeping is used to aid financial sustainability and has proven to work as a means of income generation and is contributing in the sustainability of people’s livelihoods.

Beekeeping is now a source of food, medicine and raw materials for this community and has reduced poverty in the area thus by providing income for people to sustain their livelihoods through the sale of honey.
The youths have formed an association and got their honey tested by the Standard Association of Zimbabwe and there are selling their honey in supermarkets in areas like Harare unlike other people selling by the road side.

Due to the same programme the youths have managed to raise money and bought a house to use as a processing centre and a crusher for crushing their honey. Now the place is known as an agro-processing centre after the realisation that natural resources can really pay off.

Most of the youths have built houses and some are looking after their families as well as sending their siblings to school. Some are now making stock feeds from the residue honey combs and started another project of poultry and the waste of the chicks being used in the beans and sunflower plantation as organic manure.
In conclusion I can safely say the youths in this area are more concerned about projects they venture into not for income only but also sustainable resource management.

“We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment but often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible”- Wangari maathi.

My name is Pavan, I am from a small village in the Godavari river delta of East Coast of Bay of Bengal in Andhra Pradesh (Host of Cop-11), India.

The place where I live is unique with endemic flora and fauna as the eastern gaths ever green forest and mangroves made this place so special. The people in this region continuously receive best ecosystem services from nature, for example mangroves are protecting their lives, fields, and cattle since time immemorial, their existence completely depend on its survival. The recent challenges in this region are illegal cutting of mangroves for wood and fodder, aqua culture, and illegal poaching of wild animals and birds in and around mangroves. As a nature lover and responsible educated guardian, I always filled with guilt, sadness and great pain, by watching the environmental destruction in and around of my village by villagers. The main reasons for this are poverty and lack of education among the villagers in order to earn money through un-ecologically unsustainable way..

Besides severe dependence on forest the most worry some thing is choosing wild life poaching as an employment by most of the uneducated youth from tribes of Chenchu and Yanadi . Almost 50 families in the village directly benefiting from this very act. During the monsoon when it is difficult to catch the lizards, they catch fish from rivers and lakes to sustain them selves.

This is the tradition adopted from their ancestors and passing it from one generation to another. The strong myth prevalent in this area that the meat of monster lizards is an Aphrodisiac, resulted in uncontrolled hunting, as it fetches high price in the market due to high demand this became a curse on its existence. Most of the local politicians are spectating as they receive their own share in this act, they never try to stop the atrocity against the wild life.

As a silent witness for years watching the atrocities on this dumb animals, I couldn’t stop my self to see them continuing. The inspiration and valuable learnings from Go4BioDiv International Youth Forum as a messenger compelled me to start to implement the learnings from this forum and from my fellow messengers and instructors, I slowly started educating the local youth about the importance of conserving biodiversity and its necessity .With the help of the inspired local youth ..

I started reaching public through awareness campaigns in schools and in markets, shared with them the facts about the meat they are eating is not an Aphrodisiac. The public talks I carried out in various places on the importance of wild life conservation, resulted in positive change as the days progressed in the local communities.

I continuously worked on educating the woman, youth and children in the communities sharing them the importance of conservation and need for shifting their livelihood from unsustainable methods of earnings to sustainable ways of earnings.Some of them they were motivated and responded positively while others felt sad about loosing their unsustainable livelihood.

I started initiating some alternative livelihood options along with other educated youth in my village among these alternatives are chickens and ducks rearing and sustainable fishing.. Initially I invested money from my own college scholarship and donated four pairs of hens, ten pairs of ducks and a fishing net to each twenty six positively responded families. They started keeping more chicks and ducks. In the mean time they are getting income from catching fish.

These people also earning money cooperatively by keeping their ducks in rice fields, where their fecal matter is used as a source of manure. As rice crop is grown thrice in a year in this region, before rice planting these ducks are made to stay in the field from morning to evening for this they are paid by the rice field owners. They move ducks from one field to another, which is continuously generating income during the season.

They started thinking to save some money to invest in other income generating activities like goat and sheep farming. As we cannot expect the change in peoples hunting habit in a short time, the pressure on hunting animals has reduced drastically. The village women and youth are actively involved in stopping the trade by informing the local police, so now people are afraid to sell the meat.

By seeing the results and benefits from the people who are following sustainable methods of earning most of the people are showing interest to follow this way of income generation, to improve their quality of life.

This is a small testimony I can share that little things we do will make a difference…I am keep on going in this endeavor pushing forward myself to make a difference in the society were I live….

I’m a 21 years old, a law student from Mauritius, doing LLB(Hons) third year at the University of Mauritius.

I am passionate about social work, leadership, team spirit, playing table tennis, swimming, playing chess, writing, wildlife observations, farming, ethics, helping the community with new ideas, participating in innovative competitions, socialising, nature discoveries, establishing justice and fairness, alleviating poverty in any way I can, elimination of discrimination of any sort. I’m a law person, but deep inside I believe that ethics can achieve much greater heights in establishing peace, security and fraternity round the globe than any law. Hence, in order to promote ethics, we need to bring on the proper atmosphere for people to be and act ethical. As such, my endeavour is to create this atmosphere and pleasant environment for us, brothers and sisters, to live on together as one.

Basically, Mauritius is reputed as an African State which does not possess any capital resources except the human capital. So much so that it imports 70% of it’s food commodities. In this regard, farming is not the main concern of the nation since it is being oriented towards the tourism industry mostly due to the fact that it has attractive seacoasts.

Nonetheless, in the last few decades, the seacoasts have been suffering from massive pollution by and landslides due to huge waves, thus causing a serious threat to the sustainability of the seasides and eliminating the living organisms inhabiting on the seacoast. As a matter of fact, sand dunes have been found to be habitats of many dune animals such as the spadefoots which are a type of toad, as well as a habitat of dune plants.

Therefore, to combat the degradation of the seacoast, I had initiated the concept of preventing vehicles from having access to the seaside with the positive collaboration of the Ministry of Environment in the country. So much so that following the proposal, the Government enacted a new law which made this suggestion a law and sanctions are now taken for contravention.

This further allowed us to better conserve the natural resources already present at the seacoast and attempts were made to delay the landslides by the plantation of filao trees along the coast. As a result, the country has benefited to a great extent in the preservation of its most crucial natural resource and continuous initiatives are being encouraged to further add to this sustainable development assignment.

I’m 31, I graduated in communication and development. I am the editor GREEN WATCH a news paper with environmental view. My social life is rich, I am Secretary General of the Association of Young UN in Cameroon, I chair the NGO Young Volunteers for the Environment in Cameroon (YVE).

At the regional level, I coordinate the activities of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC) in Central Africa, a pan-African network who fight against climate change in Africa. Meanwhile, I have a strong experience in community development.

I am engaged to access for clean energy for all. Youth educator, I’m a solar technician trained by Greenpeace, I drive the project “Sun in the school” an education project for the environment preservation and sustainable energy promotion. “Sun in the school” project is an innovative project, initiated to compensate the lack of youth training in the field environment.

It is to train students and teachers on renewable energy and sustainable development. The project promotes environmental best practices for environmental awareness to help reduce their carbon footprint. The project aims to equip these schools with solar panel to reduce their dependence and electricity and petroleum.

Xiomara Acevedo from Barranquilla – Colombia, is 22.

She is working in the development field, environmental issues and defending youth rights advocating for a sustainable world. Internationalist and founder of Barranquilla+20, a youth led collective that educate and empower children and youth in environmental issues and has more than 500 children and youth involved that have received education about the importance of developing an active role in society specially in the environmental field because Latin-American nations have lots of natural resources but our economic growth and development is putting in risk their conservation. She is involved with more than 3 years of experience in the social field working as volunteer in vulnerable communities of her city.

She is a youth champion because her story of empowerment has impacted her city since 2012 when she organized the celebration of the environmental day (5 June) with the participation of more than 100 youth and children.

The result: The youth Declaration on sustainability in Barranquilla with commitments in four main aspects: Climate change, food safety, environmental economy and sustainable cities that will be used to guide the actions of youth and children in Barranquilla.

Her project to rescue a local swamp MallorquinVIVE is finalist of a national prize of youth in Colombia. Her talk will be about youth engagement in environmental issues such as water and climate change which she has the experienced to make changes and mobilize youth and children to the action.

I’m an undergraduate student from Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia. I have a big interest and passion in Youth Empowerment, Community Development, and Volunteer Project.

Community Development Program “POSDAYA” is the community program for a relationship, communication, advocacy and container activities strengthening family functions in an integrated manner.

We had to live with the indigenous families for four weeks and we transfer our so-far-knowledge to the family members. Students not only can play as a promoter, in order to contribute to advancing the state through community service program, but also students can work as a companion, include forming a work program if the location does not exist yet, turn back if there is ever a program, improving the quality program if the program already exists, synergize all community development programs, building opportunities for cooperation with external stakeholders to the community empowerment.

In our project, we are promoting communities to create products sourced from raw materials available around the villages. The purpose of this project is to create feasible, sustainable, and profitable business run by families in this village by seeking any opportunity in these village.

I’m a Dominican lawyer and young leader who have been involved with environmental issues since long time ago. I would like to apply to the Global Landscapes Forum as “youth champion” with the talk “Youth Leadership and Environmental Empowerment”, a session to share knowledge, experiences and different approaches of youth leadership to address climate change and environmental challenges and to become a change maker.

I’m founder of “Green Hope DR”, a youth environmental project which main goal is to implement environmental education to the Dominican youth. I’ve coordinated and participated in many community projects, reforestation programs, environmental and climate change conferences such as the Clinton Global Initiative for University (CGIU), Budapest Water Summit, Global Power Shift, among others. In 2013, I was Secretary General of the Dominican – European Model United Nations Conference (DEUROMUN 2013) and also attended the “Tenth UEF – UNEP Course on Multilateral Environmental Agreements: Natural Resources”, in Joensuu, Finland.

I have also been panelist of workshops on Environment and Education, sponsored by the Dominican Republic Vice-presidency Office, in the Conference “Community participation, volunteering and social activism”, moderator in the National Consultations of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda, the Panel on “World Water Crisis” following the screening of “Flow: For the love of water” in the DR Global Film Festival and speaker in the Congress on Youth and Environment. In 2010, I was the President of the National Youth Forum for Water, organized by the Ministry of Education. In 2012 I was coordinator of the Youth Leaders International Round Table: Leadership and Community Service.

An unacceptable 58% of children under 5 in Timor-Leste suffer from malnutrition. These children live in beautiful but remote mountains where reliable water and good soils are scarce.

MY PROJECT
To address this injustice, Timorese NGO HIAM Health designed Community Gardens for Nutrition program that educates food-insecure communities on growing nourishing, organic vegetables. Our philosophy is to empower citizens to utilise their skills, traditonal knowledge and renewable resources to foster their own sustenance.

MY STORY WORKING WITH YOUTHS
I have a committed track record providing a voice to youths. Currently I am priveleged to mentor HIAM Health’s team of dedicated Timorese youths and collaborate with the youths who comprise the majority of training participants. Previously I was a sustainable development writer for the UN University in Japan and founding Director of the Australian Refugee Film Festival where I created media platforms for young people to talk about social and environmental issues of importance to them.

MY TALK
I will share my experience on how an integrated “landscapes approach” helps tackle malnutrition and underdevelopment. Specifically I will illustrate how to work with nature to grow nutritious vegetables – an essential building block to ensure today’s kids become the healthy leaders of tomorrow.

Feel your landscape, close your eyes, and go beyond: share your ideas on how youth can gather together to create a climate change global movement.

During the talk, The C4C team will share lessons learned and best practices on climate change communication. The team will challenge the youth community – both online and on-site attendees — to present their innovative ideas on how to sparkle a global, youth-driven climate change movement.

Connect4Climate (C4C) is a global partnership program dedicated to climate change communication, awareness, and action. Launched by the World Bank, the Italian Ministry of the Environment, and the GEF Global Environment Facility, C4C is helping, through arts, social media, and the web, to amplify the voices of local stakeholders who have stories to tell about climate change.

C4C’s goal is to create a participatory, open knowledge platform that engages the global community in climate change conversation to drive local action. Since our launch, we have built an aggregate online community of over half a million users engaged in climate change dialogue and resource-sharing, and a coalition of more than 150 knowledge partners committed to climate change communication and action.

The idea of beekeeping was a long hold dream that Vusi had last thought of coming true in his life after his tertiary education.

Vusi, a young man from Chindunduma village started his bee keeping project as way of curbing the problem of bee attacks in his area. For years people in the village had suffered from bee attacks from fields and in the veldt land and in one incident, two young boys were stung to death by a swarm of bees whilst heading cattle in the pasture lands. The community embarked on several ways of trying to control the problem by lighting up the hives.

In addition, veld fires incidences increased in the village as a result of lighting up of bee hives in the bushes which have a high biomass load, because of the tropical climatic conditions of the area. Vusi, as a Natural Resources Student and an ecological steward, noticed the state at which the ecosystem and the environment were being injured at an unprecedented rate. He offered to help his village, to conserve its natural resources and save them from it’s a slow death and extinction state.

The young man started to attract a sound market with his produce from other villages surrounding Chindunduma and in a short unknown time his name had echoed the whole region due to his success story. Vusi started to employ young people in the village in his bee keeping project which empowered and improved the lives of many people in the village.

Because of Vusi’s innovative ideas and love for natural resources, Chindunduma has seen a drastic decline in veld fire incidents and bee attacks. His efforts have seen the ecosystem functions return to their pristine state. Crop yield have gone back to their usual levels as there are plenty of bees to pollinate the flowers.

Vusi is a local hero for the environment, and his work has been emulated by other community members as well as other villagers. His hard work and passion for the environments has made him turn environmental problems in his area into a source of employment and income for himself and the community.

I am an Amerindian from a small forest dwelling community in Northwestern Guyana. I attended primary school in my community, and later successfully completed vocational training and a BSc. in Forestry. Presently I am attending the University of Gottingen in Germany pursuing a MSc. in Tropical and International Forestry.

I have worked as a forest officer for four years; however, most recently, I worked with the Guyana Mangrove Restoration Project which was tasked with the restoration of mangroves. Being the monitoring officer, I worked along with youthful colleagues; unconsciously creating huge positive changes to the environment and the lives of many.

This project changed the lives of many poor villagers along the coasts of Guyana. Today, over 1000 ha of mangroves have been restored. Six village groups have been established to manage the mangrove areas. Income is generated for honey production, agro processing, and an Ecotourism venture all in the mangrove areas, which have won the 2011 Caribbean Ecotourism Award.

This project was deemed a success, thanks to the hard work of a youthful staff that has proven that youths can make a difference in natural resource and forest management.

Bob Koigi is a youth champion. He is an award winning agriculture journalist who has extensively covered agribusiness in East Africa and the role agriculture can play in creating job opportunities for young people.

Through the only agriculture news in East Africa, where Bob is the lead journalist, he has dedicated his platform to providing information on how agriculture can be a money spinner for the young people struggling to get jobs.

He has written success stories like that of a group of youth in Kenya’s coast who are earning by planting a unique tree that acts as wind breaker and earning by entering to agreements with beach hotels owners. He is now much sought after by youth groups to give talks on his extensive coverage of agriculture and advice them on market information.

He has won the African essay writing competition organized by New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) in the youth, ICT and agriculture category. He was also voted the best agriculture journalist in the East African Community Media Awards.

Description of my talk
Five out of every ten educated Kenyans are jobless. The job market can only accommodate half. Where do the rest go or do? The net effect is spiralling crime. The World Bank called them a disaster in waiting; a ticking time bomb.
But the same researches identify agriculture as an untapped goldmine in job creation capable of absorbing the unemployed millions. Yet Kenya is just a representation of how biting the youth unemployment is. In Europe the figures are more staggering. The youth own the future. They have to prepare to feed the growing population. But interest in farming among them is waning. Then there is the looming disaster that is the climate change. So how can we tap into the youth to encourage modern smart age farming.

Technology is one of the biggest bet. Courting technology in the entire farming process, through buying seeds and inputs through the cellphone for example, access to farming information online, use of modern farming tools and techniques like greenhouse and selling produce online will allow our generation to kill one two stones. We get more youth into farming for business and also encourage them to farm smart to mitigate against the effects of climate change.

We continue to get feedback of how permaculture is transforming people’s life and the potential it has to contribute to socio-economic development of households. It is against this background that Kusamala continues to spread permaculture and agroecology in rural communities of Malawi.

We strongly believe that communities should be given capacity to see the potentials available in the villages, and pursue their own avenues towards their desired ends regarding development. We are aware that farmers are kept in a state of despair and helplessness, especially when they think about how they are told that they can not produce enough food since they do not have access to inorganic fertilizers.

Some farmers think the problem is too huge that they can not do anything about it, and some think there is no other solutions to such problems hence they do business as usual. While fertilizer is very important and that is an undisputable fact, it should be acknowledged that inorganic fertilizer also have potential to improver production.

We believe farmers should be informed wholesomely about fertilization of crops so that they are not kept in a cycle of debts due to fertilizer purchases and eventually in perpetual hunger due to crop failure.

By investing in soil fertility, and water management, farmers can transform they productivity and improve livelihood in the long run. This can be done through a set of agricultural systems that combines a set of indigenous polyculture systems and biology. Through soil conservation and fertility management, agro-biodiversity and water conservation and harvesting a set of vital ecosystem elements will be nurtured.

Permaculture comes to us as a full set of all these aspects and provides farmers with an alternative way of approaching development. Farmers now believe that development is from within and not imported from elsewhere. This is as a result of the capacity build initiatives by Kusamala whose main aim is to open up the eyes of the communities so that they can see the great treasures vested in the communities already.

Kusamala houses Malawi’s largest permaculture demonstration and training centre. The centre is used as evidence for its advocacy themes. Within the demonstrations are components such as: Climate smart agriculture in the staple field, home gardens which feed about 30 people every lunch hour, raising chickens, organic commercial garden, eco-sanitation, medicinal garden, tree nursery just to mention a few.

The techniques used to design this demonstration centre are being taken to communities through community trainings, funded projects, staff household demonstrations, radio programs, presentations and many others. The youth are the future of the Malawi nation and if anything is to be sustainable, they need to be involved right from inception through to the uttermost parts of the initiative.

We believe that it is through simple initiatives by households which will influence the community and simple community initiatives will influence traditional leaders and then the local governance and through to the central government. We believe harnessing ecosystem based approaches to food security and adaptation to climate change is crucial in this era and the youth should be key players if this is to be sustainable. Nothing for the youth without the youth, nothing for the communities without the communities.