Young and Green Students introduced to fight climate change
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Prisca Manyiwa-Masuku
MIRROR REPORTER
HARARE – Elevate Trust in Zimbabwe has introduced a strategy called Young and Green Students where youth are captured and brought into the fight against climate change through digital technology.
Young and Green Students is born out of the realization that social media platforms are the playgrounds of the youth. It is therefore easier to capture youth on such platforms and engage them in climate change issues.
Environmental Sustainability and Climate Action, programmes director, Iggy Saviere of Elevate Trust announced the strategy at the 10th edition of Hub Unconference held in Harare last week.
“Young people’s primary playground is social media. As policy makers and organizations we can leverage such a playground for them to come up with relevant and climate specific narratives that they can use to provide awareness to their peers.
“Elevate Trust has Young and Green Students Initiative and this ensures that we have young people at the forefront of climate action here in Zimbabwe.
“We us digital tools such as Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms to raise awareness about climate change and climate action,” said Saviere.
He said climate change is negatively affecting vulnerable groups such as women, people with disabilities (PWD) and there is need to come up with specific solutions to assist them.
Another panelist, Makomborero Marumisa said that there is need to contextualise climate change awareness to suit people according to their geographical location and not use the same template globally.
“The best way to use digital technology in climate action is ensure that when communicating we make it contextually relevant to the people we are talking to because there is a tendency to copy and paste communication, the way one speaks to people in Greenland or Finland who really understand about climate change and the way one speaks to people in Harare who really do not care about climate change should be different,” said Marumisa.
The Hub Unconference 2024 was organised by Magamba Network, Open Data Africa Summit in partnership with CHARM Africa.