- Category 1: Ongoing youth projects
Winner: Prakash Khadka (Center for Social Development and Research (CSDR)) - Category 2: New project proposals
Winner: Lily Yumagulova, Casey Gabrial, Sandy Bernice and students from the “Preparing our Home” program (Xet̓ólacw Community School and International Sustainability Education Foundation (ISEF)
The competition was organised by the Water Youth Network in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization/Global Water Partnership flood and drought management programmes: Associated Programme on Flood Management (APFM) and Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP).
The first project, carried out by CSDR, engages young social mobilizers and volunteers by training them to integrate community-based participatory mapping processes with internet-based collaborative digital mapping technologies. The main objective is to map key information pertaining to flood hazard, exposure and vulnerability at the household and community level across lower Karnali river basin before the 2017 monsoon, and to develop a transdisciplinary approach that can be replicated in similar regions across Nepal. So far, 54 communities in Kailali and Bardiya districts have been remotely mapped (including more than 2500 houses and over 100km of roads/trails) by volunteers from around Nepal.
“Preparing our Home” is a community-based disaster resilience program developed and implemented by Canada’s First Nations communities. Beginning with developing multiple grade school curriculum, it creates intergenerational, multi-stakeholder opportunities to understand risk and develop context-specific youth-led and community implemented risk management and planning activities. Training activities in their project implementation pipeline, focus on understanding risk, developing flood and drought resilience strategies, and developing emergency management plans and preparedness planning.
The winning projects will be presented at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction Conference, which will take place in Cancun, Mexico from 22 to 26 May 2017. They will also receive direct financial support and an opportunity for collaboration with APFM and IDMP.
Youth Water and Climate #YWC
This competition is under the umbrella of YWC. This initiative gathers young voices on water from all over the world. In 2015 a group of youth from more than 20 countries started a global initiative where they produced a white paper in the leadup to COP21, which allowed for a Youth Commitment under the Lima-Paris Action Agenda.
One year later, youth are going from commitment to action, from COP21 to COP22. This now being upscaled in many parts of the world to bring the youth together and support them in implementation. You can find out more about YWC here.