Global Changemakers

Get more information about Amare’s CAP: Climate Change Adaptation!

Hi All: warm greetings from East Africa

Today I am going to inform you about one of the community action projects started last November by a Global Changemaker in northern part of Ethiopia.

Climate Change Adaptation is the name of my community action project (CAP) and its objectives are to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change and to mobilize the community and youth in particular for climate change adaptation measures at community level.

To achieve the aforementioned objectives, some of the major activities we performed previously:
The first activity was establishing a significant number of climate clubs in elementary, junior and high schools, colleges and universities in the project area to mobilize students and to support them to clean up their localities to address climate change and environmental issues and lobby their families. More over, clubs were supported to develop their own self-action plan and code of conduct. Then, the project team prepared guidelines and distributed them as working knowledge and a document to keep them strengthened. Youth collation on climate change was established in bahir dar city and the coalition was linked with the government officials to raise awareness about the impact of climate change among the residents of the city and nearby rural areas.

This coalition has been implementing its activities in a cost effective manner because it used pre-scheduled gatherings of the government to deliver information and as a result, they reached a large number of people.

Training was given to school clubs and youth coalition leaders on project management skills and climate change related issues to develop constructive projects and participate in popularising the CAP in their clubs, associations and communities. Stationary materials that are basic to run the day to day activities of the project was purchased and distributed at the beginning of this month to all clubs.

When we started our CAP, it was the right time to talk about climate change among our community because almost everybody invited to take part in our program was aware of the impact of climate change. This, because some of the impacts of climate change were visible among us, like the rising temperature, decreasing water levels and very short rainy seasons. However, most of the participants didn’t know the real causes of climate change and they didn’t think they can do something to minimize the impacts of it. Thanks to our clubs leader, this has changed. They clearly demonstrated possible ways to adapt climate change in our communities.

 
Since the time we started raising awareness in schools and public gathering places, most people are aware of the impacts of climate change and possible ways of climate change adaptation. The coincidence was good that at that time the local and international medias were talking about climate change in connection with the Copenhagen climate change summit and we have been trying to maintain the energy created among the people in the project areas.

Some of the problems we faced during project implementation were a lack of coordination among implementing agencies, especially among the youth coalition and local administrations, and unavailability of some media materials in schools to start the club radio program during break times in schools. The clubs established in high schools, colleges and universities are performing well because most of students selected to take part in the project do have previous experience in raising awareness, either in HIV or other developing issues. But students working in elementary and junior school clubs lack experience and weren’t doing well. To address this problem, we are trying to connect senior students with the junior students to learn from each other.

Anyways, the results are encouraging and the last components of the project are expected to reach more people in the coming four months. This is what I can tell you for today. Please contact me at ‘amare2006@gmail.com’ if you would like to get more information about our project. Hopefully we will be able develop the project website when I post the next blog so that you can get much more information about the project and our organization.

Amare