MALTAHÖHE - While too many people think the youth are normally not involved in any cause, the Namibian Youth Coalition on Climate Change (NYCCC) demonstrates it is not true.

Since 2016, six members of the NYCCC board and other members of the association have been taking action to engage young people in the fight against climate change.
Hans Hangue, the project coordinator, explained to New Era: “We are trying to coalize youth altogether for us to act and change things.”

With NYCCC, education and sensibilisation are the main actions undertaken.
“We are going to high schools to talk about climate change and all the challenges that it implies, and we are creating green and environment clubs if there’s not,” stated Hangue.
For now, the organisation works mostly in Windhoek and the surroundings, but plans are to enlarge the activities to eight other regions in the country.

“We want to reach as many people as we can,” added Hangue.
And in addition to the interventions in schools, NYCCC also organises games with other associations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to send out their message about climate change in a different and more entertaining manner. “And after the games, we sit down and discuss it, so we can debate the different solutions, for instance,” stated Hangue.

NYCCC is now trying to diversify its actions. In June, members of the association went to Ondangwa to create awareness on climate change in high schools, but also for a workshop with the town council to plant trees in the city.

“We saw that a lot of people don’t really know what climate change is, but there’s a true interest once we discussed it,” explained Hangue. Now, the NYCCC wants to pursue food security with community gardens to engage students in climate change competitions in the rural areas.

“We are waiting for more collaborations to help us finance all of our projects,” said Hangue.
“But for now, we are very happy to represent Namibia in December in Poland for the Conference of Youth,” he said.

*Lucie Mouillaud is a journalism intern from Toulouse, a city in the south of France.