By esther.agbarakwe
November 2, 2011
In Sept. 2011, I was invited by the World Bank to join a panel discussion on climate change and Social media. Off cource it was a honor as I had just arrived Washington DC. My work back home on Youth Climate Advocacy and global citizenship have been heard and seen across the many continent which am very proud of:-). The World have a project targeting youth and known as Connect4Climate.
Connect4Climate (C4C) is a campaign, a competition, and a community that cares about climate change. The goal of C4C is to raise awareness about climate change issues around the world, with an initial focus on Africa. With the help of our broad coalition of partners, both big and small, we are kickstarting an interactive dialogue on climate change issues amongst African youth and global social media users. With roughly 70% of Africa’s total population under 30, the Connect4Climate campaign will tap the rich potential of African’s youth as powerful agents of social change.
The Panel discussion was titled ‘Smart Crowding4Climate’ and had Daniele Calabrese (founder of soundtracker.fm), Jeri Curry(Internews’ Senior Vice-President for Global Communications and Private Development), Angus Friday (International Climate Policy specialist working on outreach to Africa and Small Island Developing States), Mario Lubetkin (Director General of the Inter Press Services and event moderator), Dr. Mohamed Nada (Project Manager and Advisor on Decentralization for the Strategic National Support Development project), Tms Ruge (Connect4Climate lead social media strategist and founder of Project Diaspora), Paul Sparrow (Senior Vice President for Broadcasting and Media at the Newseum), and Amanda Vega (founder of Amanda Vega Consulting, which focuses on PR, social media management and compliance, and web services spanning 15 countries) and I (Atlas Fellow and co-founder of the Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition)) as Panelists . The event took place at The World Bank Complex on September 21, 2011 in Washington, DC.