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The Global Youth Video Competition winners are from India and Mexico
07.12.2018 | Corporate philanthropy
The results of the Global Youth Video Competition, which focuses on young people’s actions for climate, have been announced! Two talented 20-year-olds won the competition: India’s Vikas Yadav in the “Green and Climate Friendly Jobs” category and Mexico’s Andrea Sofia Rosales Vega in the “Responsible Production and Consumption” category.
Vikas and Sofia, who both care about the environment, have won the Global Youth Video Competition. Each made a video about the fight against climate change in their home countries, India and Mexico.
The prize? The winners attended the 24th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 24) in Katowice, Poland in December and will work with the UN’s Global Climate Change Action team covering the meeting’s highlights and writing a report about it for a global youth audience. The awards ceremony took place at the COP24 Action Centre on Thursday 6 December.
What solutions can be offered to create green, climate-friendly jobs? What steps can be taken to produce and consume responsibly?
- Andrea Sofia Rosales Vega, winner in the “Responsible Production and Consumption” category with the “Eco Urban” project in Mexico
In her video, Sofia explains how we can clean up cities by getting people to behave eco-responsibly. In Mexico, 86,343 tonnes of waste are generated every day. What solution does Sofia propose? Her video presents a street-cleaning project called “Eco Urban” aiming to collect and recycle waste such as plastic bottles or old clothes that are processed and resold.
And 60% of the proceeds go to an organisation fighting childhood cancer. Her video ends with a motivating, touching sentence showing young Mexicans’ commitment to protecting the environment: “We’re ordinary people working for an extraordinary world!”.
We’re ordinary people working for an extraordinary world!
- Vikas Yadav, winner in the “Green and Climate Friendly Jobs” category with the “Step Forward, Be Eco Friendly, Go Green” project
Sofia explores cities in her video, but Vikas Yadav goes to the countryside in India, where over 70% of the people live off the land. The effects of climate change have a strong impact on food production, so farmers explain how and why innovative farming methods can play a key role in mitigating and adjusting to it. Vikas urges people to “go green” by taking up more natural growing and management methods.
Youth from 110 countries submitted over 300 responses to climate change
The videos by these two young people are encouraging examples of global climate actions indispensable to fight climate change.
Over 968 applications, including 300 eligible videos from 110 countries from Azerbaijan to Yemen, France and Japan, were submitted to the fourth Global Youth Video Competition. Those figures attest to the commitment of youth (18 to 30 years old) to climate. “The videos by these two young people are encouraging examples of global climate actions indispensable to fight climate change,” says UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa. “I congratulate Sofia Vega and Vikas and applaud all the participants who offered their responses to climate change, which are primordial because they come from international youth.”
UN Climate Change launched the competition as part of its work on Action for Climate Empowerment in partnership with tve (Television for the Environment) and the Global Environment Fund Micro-Funding Program set up by the United Nations Development Program supported by the BNP Paribas Foundation and the German Federal Foundation for the Environment (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU).
Photos: header ©nearimages // ©BNP Paribas Foundation