
Youth United for the Environment!
Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) was initiated in 1994 by the frenchman Philippe Saugier as a reaction to the damaged ozone layer. Today it is part of the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) at its headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it is engaging over 500,000 young reporters from 44 countries. The aim of the programme is to mentor and equip young people in the ages 11–25 to research and report on environmental issues, to drive change in their local communities and beyond. The young reporters can also submit their cases to national and international “YRE competitions”. Entries are assessed by professional juries and the most inspiring, well-researched entries are recognised on a global scale.
As a member of FEE, Ecoocean since 2013 operates a YRE programme in Israel, and every year, around 1,000 budding reporters from Jewish and Arabic schools all over Israel, participate in the program. Those who want to join are trained together with their teacher in school by Ecooceans’s educators, and it becomes a part of their daily education. They learn how to research, create content and communicate through channels such as videos and articles, material which then hopefully can influence people in power to act. And so far, submissions from the young reporters in Israel, to the international YRE competition, have won 1st, 2nd or 3rd place in different categories each year.
“We provide material and teach them the tools, we can even bring young reporters on board our research vessel to take samples at sea, but it is also important to mention that all our work is “fact based”. We do not rely on social media for source material. We scientifically show them how to conduct research using facts, and this is in itself an important target for the YRE programme,” says Ecoocean CEO, Arik Rosenblum, and continues:
“We consider Ecoocean to be an inclusive organisation, for all citizens. And through suport, such as from The Robert Weil Family Foundation, we have been able to invest in becoming a truly bi-cultural organisation. This means that we go beyond knowledge of different languages but also cultures, and this enables us to work in all communities. The environment does not know borders so working together across geographical and cultural borders is the only way to resolve environment issues. It is also the reason why we have initiated a continuation of the YRE programme, one which we call Youth United for the Environment (YUE).
Having worked in Jewish and non Jewish communities, both Israeli and Palestinian, the next logical step for Ecoocean has been to try and bring these together to collectively identify and create awareness on shared environmental issues. In their new YUE programme, Schools are approached, engaged, and those between the age of 11-15 who feel motivated, participate. The national coordinator of the YRE and YUE programs, Jasmine Mawasi, explains it like this:
“Communities that border to each other might be separated by faith, but the fact is that they also share issues, they might for example both be situated along the same polluted river. So we first work on an issue simultaneously in two separate groups of Arabic and Jewish heritage. We then bring these groups together and make them sit and work on how to create awareness about the issue collectively. The most important part here is that we have brought them together around a common issues. It is an issue about the environment, but it is also the opportunity to talk about other issues, like why we do not know each other better. In this work we are sensitive to where the respective participants come from, and this is a challenge but also very rewarding.”
After much preparation, Ecooceans’s new YUE programme was set to launch at the first day of school on 8th of October 2023, but everything changed the day before.
“Everyone went through a state of shock on October 7th, and we as an organisation first had to spend time with our staff. While rockets were flying we thought about what we could do, how we could deal with ourselves and others. After a while we slowly picked up the conversation with our potential partners in the YUE programme and heard their thoughts. Does a school in an Arab community feel comfortable to meet a school with Jewish kids? And most importantly, how could such a meeting be arranged so that all children felt safe? This was a whole process that took around eight months to determine.” says Arik.
“We had initially hoped to create six YUE groups, but today we are glad to say that we actually are running seven groups nationwide, with a total of 210 participants.” concludes Jasmine.
Ecoocean’s new Youth United for the Environment programme have already outdone itself in numbers. And while the actual results are yet to be published on plattforms at the end of this school year, things certainly seems to look brighter not only for the local environment but also for the communities.
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