CYEN Launches Climate Justice Program Open Call

The Indigenous Livelihood and Climate Justice Program is giving youths from indigenous communities an opportunity to take climate action in their communities. The program is being spearheaded by the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN) in partnership with the Department of Youth Services. CYEN launched an open call for indigenous youths to apply to the program by visiting the Department of Youth Services Facebook page and the cyen.org website. Dominique Noralez, the program associate at CYEN, told us more.

Dominique Noralez, Program Associate, Caribbean Youth Environment Network

Dominique Noralez

“This is a Climate Justice and Indigenous Livelihood project. It is being done with the Caribbean Youth Environment Network in partnership with the Department of Youth Service. What we are doing is we are trying to tie in this whole concept of climate justice and what it means for vulnerable populations with a focus on indigenous populations given Belize’s distinct demographic. It has two parts, first dealing with a training of trainers, just eight trainers. We are going o train them. Then, a second course with a larger group of about sixty young people in total will be targeting Dangriga and Punta Gorda. What we are doing there is a think giving them the opportunity to get mentorship and scale up of a community project that has to do with climate justice, action, and of course granting some launch pad funding to get that off the ground. The training of trainers targets people who are 3eighteen to thirty give from anywhere in Belize. You get into that program and eight of you are chosen. The second part, the youth think tank, is targeting youths that are sixteen to twenty nine and we target people specifically of Garifuna and May descent. Those are the only people that we are targeting for this specific project. We at the Caribbean Youth Environment Network, our primary focus is climate justice and we wanted to look at indigenous people and we can’t serve everyone with this small funding we have to do this project. But also, because we recognize that indigenous people are at the center of protecting our environment because it is so intimately tied to their livelihoods.”