Youth in Landscapes Camp, Accra 2019
Africa’s peoples and landscapes have rising opportunities and solutions for scaling up action towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Though the challenges are great – such as land degradation, natural resource depletion, impacts of climate change, pertaining poverty or rural outmigration – there is growing momentum towards building new processes for enhanced well-being in healthy ecosystems.
The Youth in Landscape Initiative (YIL), together with the GLF, has designed a learning program to bridge global youth energy with local community solutions. The first-ever YIL camp brought together young leaders from across the globe to Ghana, to learn from traditional as well as novel local practices and development solutions.
Through working in partnership with A Rocha Ghana and the Development Institute, participants engaged in interactive workshops, community building activities, and in-depth conversations with key stakeholders “on site” and “hands on” at dedicated project sites.
After the two-day immersive landscape experience (October 26-27), participants took their new knowledge into a creative design sprint at the GLF hACCRAthon (October 28) and further actively involved in the GLF Accra: “Restoring Africa’s Landscapes” conference (October 29-30). Together this experience and exposure encouraged and inspired young participants to become front-line actors in their own countries working collaboratively and addressing landscape challenges with a holistic approach.
Objectives
- Develop a deeper understanding of multi-stakeholders restoration projects.
- Identify key features of successful implementation of holistic projects on the ground
- Enable youth to critically evaluate specific projects and their contexts
- Provide skills for human-centred design approaches
Youth in Landscapes Camp Program
- Online activities: Participants familiarized themselves with current issues and challenges in their hosting communities by developing a SWOT analysis.
- In-person activities: Two groups of participants hosted on the project sites to work with community members and host organization experts.
- hACCRAthon: Participants took the challenge of engaging more African youth in landscape restoration.
- GLF Accra: To round up the program, participants joined the GLF conference, learning from outstanding speakers and projects, while connecting with like-minded attendees.
Outcomes and outputs
- Strengthened youth leadership capacities and grasp of holistic approaches to restoration initiatives.
- Creating rewarding experiences for participants, supporting organizations and camp developers.
- Being able to transfer lessons learned to own work
Learn more about the two camps:
- Read Yapeng Ou’s article “In Ghana, how the first-ever Youth in Landscapes Camp changed my mind“
- Watch this video on the camp experience in the Avu Lagoon
For more information, reach out to a.bucci@cgiar.org
If you are interested in participating as sponsors, contact the GLF Youth Coordinator Anna Bucci at a.bucci@cgiar.org
Benefits to sponsors and collaborating organizations:
- Increased awareness with a potential reach of as many as 200 million people via extensive coverage on Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) and Youth in Landscapes platforms and partner organizations. This will extend your reach to targeted networks and a global community;
- Built goodwill and visibility across GLF stakeholders and demonstrated CSR commitment;
- Your organization’s input in designing workshop agendas, spotlight topics and speakers selection, as well as highlighting your success stories;
- Recordings of final compilation video, podcast, and other visual products for your website(s) and communication channels.
Applications are now closed.