More than 100 youth mappers from around the globe participated in a climate mapping exercise that was presented at a youth forum at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan.
Voices of Youth Maps is a collaboration between UNICEF and local governments to bring about positive change through direct engagement with youth groups. The global effort to create digital maps that depict everyday realities focused on natural disasters recently with a culminating presentation at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan.
More than 100 young people from around the world helped piece together a map that identifies issues related to climate and disaster risk reduction. Each participant documented local conditions with photos and text, sharing their individual perspectives with peers and the world.
This effort to engage youth for their input and opinions also has an ancillary benefit of making young people more active in their own communities, as witnessed by the following quote from a participant:
I am very happy to be a part of this activity because I will be able to help solve the problems that affect my neighborhood, such as unhealthy and dangerous places. Children will benefit from that. King, 13, Haiti
Learn more about Voices of Youth Maps at http://www.voicesofyouth.org/en/maps.
Visit the initiative's disaster risk reduction map at http://climatesummit.unicef-gis.org.
