World Youth Day, designated by the United Nations General Assembly in November 2014; encourages governments, educational institutions, employers, and organizations to invest in training, education, and initiatives that enhance the skills of young people.
The role of Leadership
ChangeMakersHub NPC is a South African non-profit organisation with PBO status, spearheading the EcoChangeMakers Movement, embracing this year’s theme ‘the role of skills in youth empowerment’ with the mission to ensure the inclusion of youth in climate action for people and planet.
Leading up to July’s announcement of the Youth EcoChangemakers Challenge, in celebration of World Environment Day on June 5th, CMH, hosted a pivotal “Mind The Gap” event at PWC Business School, focused on addressing the global crisis of plastic waste and the dangerous gaps that exist in the circular economy.
Leaders from across all sectors, including local and international representatives from government, leadership and learning institutes, big business, civil society and youth, filled the room to full capacity; showing up to learn how they can start a ripple effect for immediate climate action that is so needed but just not happening.
The event fostered a deeper understanding of the accumulated plastic from the last 74 years—a total of 9 billion metric tons—and called for the leaders in the room to help ignite a movement that could contribute collective impact toward a future free from harmful plastic waste by supporting the EcoChangeMakers Programme.
Today, with over 80 000 tonnes of plastic leakage into South Africa’s oceans per year, CMH has dedicated EcoChangeMakers; a climate action programme for active citizenship, to catch harmful non-recyclable plastic at source and repurpose it out of the equation altogether.
The Youth EcoChangeMaker Challenge, shares practical guidelines to reduce plastic pollution immediately, making climate action understood and really relevant to the greater equation.
The relentless tide of discarded plastics is threatening our iconic marine life, our land and its nature, and the delicate ecosystems of our South Africa
It is estimated that if we do not change the status quo, in 100 years, globally over 1 million species will be extinct.
Yet, despite the enormity of the plastic problem, there is hope. When we come together, we can make a profound difference. ChangeMakersHub is inviting all who want to lead the charge by demonstrating how easily plastics can be repurposed into valuable resources, including inspiring statement art pieces and public service benches that beautify our city, to join their movement.
“For young people to become successful life-long learners, find productive work, take informed decisions that affect their lives and actively engage in their communities, they need to access inclusive, relevant learning and skills development opportunities.” UNICEF
This July has been declared #plasticfree month globally, and EcoChangeMakers taking up the challenge will become the missing links in the circular economy, bridging the gaps with remove, repurpose, and redeem.
The Youth EcoChangeMakers Challenge, together with our Impact Partners are committed to empowering learning institutes with easy to use exercises and challenges in the classrooms that create immersive learning experiences inspiring youth’s understanding of their impact on the world and how they can be powerful contributors to societies’ immediate needs.
We believe our future-leader building, learning institutes, presently hold the greatest power to the most pressing challenges of our time; their pupils. And now is a time when we call for their leadership to become the Torchbearers for this cause.
Each school assigns teachers who will implement the programme per grade in the most inclusive way possible. The teachers become the EcoChangemakers’ Advocates and help us guide youth to use what they learn about plastic waste into opportunities to #walkthetalk for change and inspire those around them through example.
Driven by this belief, our mission is to support learning institutes, their advocate teachers and youth to create positive change towards more inclusive participation on a global crisis, that locally in vulnerable communities is wreaking havoc.
Including youth in experiential, immersive learning shows them their value in real life scenarios, they are able to increase their personal well-being, and influence the collective people around them. The programme asks for actions that foster a sense of citizenship; “#IamTheRipple and inspire through example = “RippleEffect”
This programme has been piloted and successfully adopted into a blueprint that is easily replicable through an EcoChangeMaker Train the Trainer programme, which has the potential to catalyse mass climate action and repurpose plastics for the greater good rather than merely relocating them to landfills.
Why is Citizenship a skill
Taking the state of the planet and the ripple effect on ecosystems and human survival here on earth, it goes without saying, the potential of growth in youth by understanding responsible citizenship.
The potential of youth in making a difference in the world is exponential if given the right tools. Youth have the ability to create a ripple effect of influence in households and their communities.
The ecoChangeMakers Challenge gives the opportunity to understand and mobilise climate action that can create full circle solutions to not only the plastic crisis, but also accelerates progress across all the SDG’s.
“Citizenship cannot be reduced to a catalogue of rights and duties, but entails membership of a group or groups, bringing identities into play in a very profound way. It consequently requires an ethical shift that includes a personal and collective emotional dimension.” ~ François Audigier
Implementing the EcoChangeMakers Programme where it has a strong enough ripple effect to communities, we are able pass on not only climate literacy, but take climate action within schools and household. This ensures that every child, woman and man who would have been left behind, now has an opportunity to learn and grow into a new economy while achieving positive contribution to all the sustainable development goals and ensuring the most vulnerable living things in our environment and oceans don’t get left behind either
Being part of a collective:
Our “EcoChangeMakers” mission is very specific: to prevent plastic reaching our oceans, waterways, and landfills. As a country, South Africa is one of the largest plastic contributors into the ocean, in the world. We want to change that. Together all participating schools will be able to measure the collective impact of plastic diverted away from landfill, waterways and our precious ocean.
Each school, each teaching Advocate and each student that joins this mission, can forever change the trajectory of the future of not only saving our environment by taking climate action with our programme; but to learn the real and relevant facts around plastic and ways to easily take action in everyday life. Each participant becomes an exponential catalyst for a series of actions around the problem
Sustainability, past the largely broad meaning, needs us all, to take relevant climate action and right now! Sign up your school to ‘walk the talk’ on the road to a #plasticfree “Impact 2030 Goal”
Sign Up to become an EcoChangeMaker: https://forms.gle/LNhUL4sigpLxwjXc7
Click here: https://youtu.be/YGFjPF_fYfE for ChangeMakersHub’s video compilation of the problem
(pulling content together from various reputable sources; highlighting the crisis we face as a humanity, the devastating effects on our environment, and the cruel consequences for our sentient beings.)
Click here: https://youtu.be/l1Ag5alJ8T8 for the inspiring message from Kiara Worth, a United Nations climate change activist and storyteller, a video from Bonn in which she explained the intricacies of the plastic treaty and the challenges the powers that be face in coming to a final decree. Her message thanked ChangeMakersHub and their Ecochangemakers programme for doing the essential work that counts to make the difference needed right now.
Join us on this inspiring journey, and let’s show the world the power of unity, innovation, and inclusivity, leaving nobody behind.
Find out more how this day in #PlasticFree July can change the world forever.
Connect with us at startaripple@changemakershub.org