YES4ECO: Climate change adaption and environmental stewardship

The project focuses on strengthening the capacities of adolescents and youth to promote environmentally sensitive behaviours and climate adaptive operations in their communities.

Through educational campaigns, conferences, and awareness events, young people are trained, empowered, and mobilized to secure local resources, improve knowledge in climate change and environmental stewardship, and implement actions to reduce their carbon footprint in the targeted communities.

The project also empowers adolescents and youth to implement integrated Climate Change Adaptation & Environmental Stewardship plans and projects in their local communities.

Bangladesh is one of the most climate-affected countries in the world, also experiencing frequent natural disasters. Most government and non-government disaster and environmental management processes exclude youth, despite their potential as change agents and despite the fact that it is the younger generation who not only face unique impacts from the present impact of climate change – but who will also have to deal with different and more compelling impacts as we move towards an uncertain future.

• Informative education
• Empowering advocacy
• Building resilience
• Innovative solutions and skills

• Youth have knowledge on climate and environmental issues, helping them assess risk and develop and implement action plans and micro projects to further spread awareness of the issues and promote positive solutions.
• Youth promote use of smart technologies to reduce each household’s and community’s carbon footprint.
• Youth teach communities to reduce, reuse, recycle and repurpose (e.g. transform their organic waste into compost; establish proper waste-water drainage systems; promote re-usable bags).
• Youth encourage people to raise their houses, garden bds and animal shelters to withstand floods and other hazards.
• Youth activities promote the active participation of females.
• Youth help communities to establish green spaces for biodiversity improvement and encourage the planting of drought and salt-tolerant fruit trees, vegetables and other resilient, nutritious foods.
• Youth identify water issues and promote improved water catchment, management and irrigation.
• Youth are connected with local-level, national and international contemporaries who are also focused on climate change and environmental care, protection and improvement, to foster policy improvement.