In light of the world’s interest in the emerging environmental changes, and the countries of the world are moving towards adapting to climate changes while preserving biodiversity and using environmentally friendly renewable energy sources with the development of a good waste management system while reducing the use of plastic and achieving sustainable development goals.
In view of this trend, it was necessary for civil society organizations in Egypt to have a role in spreading global environmental awareness and the extent to which it is related to the global sustainable development goals, for the Egyptian youth, and to provide them with the opportunity to train them and embrace their ideas for environmentally friendly development projects that can be implemented and financed. Young people who love Egypt developed its Environmental Pioneers Program to be one of the leading programs in this file.
Within the framework of the Youth Love Egypt Foundation in the field of environment and sustainable development over the past years, especially during the implementation of projects (Know Your Protectorate - Red Sea Free of Plastic - Clean Shores), it was noticed that 9 out of 10 people who applied to volunteer in the Foundation did not have the minimum Knowledge of environmental and sustainable development issues.
Within the context of Hosting the climate change COP 27 in Egypt , Youth Love Egypt finds that it is very essential to create a new young groups that is aware of the environmental issues , climate change issues , sustainable development goals …etc .
Therefore, the decision was taken after the Corona pandemic, and the world directed to raise environmental awareness and issues of sustainable development and circular economy, so it was decided to create a training curriculum on sustainable development and the environment entitled “Environmental pioneers program”, provided that one of the program’s final outputs will be a group of environmentally friendly startups that apply the standards of the circular economy, with the keenness to participate Women and girls in the program in equal proportion to males.
The program consists of three phases with a total number of beneficiaries of 1500 male and female trainees per year, and they will be reviewed in detail in the next pages.
Project Goals and outputs
- Raising awareness of youth about climate change issues
- Training of these groups to eliminate Environmental illiteracy
- Enabling youth to project start ups applying circular economy standards , and sustainability standards
- Creating green jobs
Project timeframe :
The project was implemented in 3 phases
The preparation phase :
- The material and courses content will be prepared from a specialized experts in the courses field
- The preparation of social media campaign in face book , twitter and instagram
- First: Steps to implement the pilot phase:
- The pilot phase of the program was launched in October 2020, with a partnership and financing from the French institute in Egypt. The scientific content of which was developed by two specialized professors from Cairo University and one of the foundation's advisers, the target group being youth aged 18 to 30, a pilot phase of the training program, involving 60 volunteers, was launched.
- The United Nations Information Center and UN volunteers in Cairo were also partners during the pilot phase in addition to Twitter .
- The pilot phase was divided into two groups during a four-day training period and implemented at the Greek camps. It was held in 28-31 March, each group of 35 trainees, where 600 people were ranked according to the criteria of diversity of their residence areas, knowledge of the principles of the English language, and only 200 were selected, and that was the first phase of selection.
- The second phase of the selection was for participants who were able to record a one - minute interview video, which the applicant would introduce himself to Arabic and English, why he had applied to the program, and what he would add to society after he has completed his training.
- In the third phase 70 out of 200 applicants were selected, training program for those who passed the second phase who qualify for this stage on two main topics, namely entrepreneurship, how to establish a startup company, transforming the projects that were proposed by the participants in the program in the previous stages, and re-presenting them in a comprehensive manner, including all the basics of transforming the idea into a startup project, in addition to TOT training for the selected participants, as well as practical training in Some factories and companies registered with the Environmental Compliance Office in the Federation of Industries.
