Empowering Plant-for-the-Planet African Ambassadors

The COVID-19 pandemic, which had a global impact, equally affected the projects of Plant-for-the-Planet. This has resulted in our activities being moved online for the continuity and consistency in providing empowerment opportunities for our ambassadors. Motivated by the pandemic, we initiated our maiden monthly Plant-for-the-Planet Youth Summit Talks in January 2022, which touch on all themes/topics related to the climate crisis and young people.

With African Climate Justice Ambassadors hardly having access to attend these important monthly discussions with selected speakers, we started the pilot Plant-for-the-Planet mentorship program where program coordinators from the African continent were selected to mobilize five mentees each, whom they will coach for the five-month pilot project to attend all our monthly sessions, with access to internet and guidance to build their capacities in understanding climate crisis issues, the work of Plant-for-the-Planet and how these mentees can implement the knowledge gained from these sessions at country level. Each mentor is provided with a monthly allowance to compensate for their participation in our virtual sessions.

Since the start of the mentorship program, we have been able to recruit mentors from Nigeria, Malawi, Uganda, and Ivory Coast with the goal of mentoring over 500 new ambassadors from Africa to further build their knowledge on climate crisis and related topics. After the pilot, we look forward to recruiting more young people to be able to access similar online resources in other parts of the continent and beyond to contribute to addressing the digital access gap in the climate space.

Lamidi also recorded a short video message for summing up his learnings after the Youth Summit Talk in May – turn on the subtitles 😉

We look forward to welcoming more ambassadors from Africa as the project aimed at empowering young African climate activists continues! Applications from other world regions are welcome, too.

Just write us to: empowerment@plant-for-the-planet.org

Text by Fatou Jeng, Climate Justice Ambassador from Gambia and Member of the Plant-for-the-Planet Board of Directors