Every 2nd of February, the whole world celebrates wetlands by holding different activities and initiatives from educational programs to clean-ups in order to raise awareness and move people to help restore, protect, and conserve wetlands around the world. This World Wetlands Day 2020 celebrates biodiversity, and highlights the fact on how millions of species coexist and depend on wetlands, where about 40% of all species in the world breed and/or live in wetland ecosystems.
Check out how YEW and different youth from all over the world are celebrating World Wetlands Day 2020 in their own different countries.
GUINEA
Our African Regional Representative and Capacity Building Team Member Roger Delamourr helped build the capacities of older people in Guinea— leading to an opportunity for the youth to raise awareness amongst local policy-makers and building the communities' capacity through informational illustrations in order to explain to them the relationship between mangrove ecosystems, biodiversity and coastal communities well-being (human well-being).
On World Wetlands Day, they developed those insightful illustrations to try to show and explain the initiatives of the youth through mangrove forests that are more productive providing several benefits to people and biodiversity but currently under threat to human pressures degrading faster than rainforest.
PHILIPPINES
Welcoming World Wetlands Day 2020, YEW Communications and Outreach Lead Gab Mejia organized a community development initiative in the Agusan Marshlands (Ramsar Site) in the Philippines.
YEW partnered with Waves For Water, an international organization providing sustainable water filters for clean accessible drinking water for underserved communities. They provided water filters across two local communities and indigenous groups surrounding the marsh, and provided water filters in the ranger's station.
YEW also partnered with a youth-led group Fund the Forest PH, handing out raincoats for the Guardians of the Marsh— the Park Rangers in collaboration with Give PH and Kids For Kids PH.
The next day, young students and youth from the Agusan Marsh also took action for World Wetlands Day 2020 in the Philippines by creating wetland stories to raise awareness on the beauty and threats of wetlands in the Philippines through storybook illustrations and art.
A wetland photo and art storytelling workshop took place given by the Communication Lead of YEW, Gab Mejia, and the Founder of Fund the Forest PH, Issa Barte. Also, a Peatlands 101 workshop was given by the Protected Area Superintendent Ms. Emily Ibonia.
Art materials and writing kits were given to the high school students across the 13 municipalities of the region in-kind donation by youth-led NGO Give.PH to support the student's endeavors in the fields of arts, writing, and science.
