SUPPORT CLEAN EARTH GAMBIA'S CLIMATE RESILIENCE PROJECTS

WHO WE ARE (IMPACTS OF OUR PROJECTS)



Clean Earth Gambia is one of the biggest youth-led environmental non-profit organisations in The Gambia. Over the past years, we have mobilised and worked with over 3000 young Gambians in the protection of our environment by conducting a series of capacity-building training programmes.

We have planted over 35,000 trees across different places in country over the years. In collaboration with the Banjul City Council under the Future Proof Initiative, we have been able to plant over 12,000 coconut and baobab trees at Banjul Beach in 2020 and 2021 due to our vulnerability to sea-level rise.

We continue to work with rural women farmers in developing their capacities in adapting to the impacts of climate change and continue to advocate for the protection of their farmlands. In 2022, through the support of Global Greens Grant Fund, we launched the first she-climate fellowship in The Gambia, a 7-month climate and leadership fellowship training for 25 young women out of over 400 applicants from all 7 regions in The Gambia about the nexus of gender and climate change. Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change in The Gambia, leading to girls dropping out of school, forced into early marriage and other social and cultural challenges that come with the impacts of climate change. The fellowship train participants about the impacts of climate change, built their leadership skills to adapt and communicate climate related issues. This is part of our goal of training 1000 women and girls to be climate leaders, community mobilisers, educators, campaigners and policymakers in their communities within the next 20 years.

We have been able to organise several beach and community clean-ups, mobilising hundreds of children and youth across the country over the years in partnership with UNICEF and different youth networks.

In partnership with other NGOs, we have organised Eco-Events in The Gambia bringing together environmental NGOs, sustainability entrepreneurs who exhibited their products, students, farmers etc to provide avenues to share best practises in our climate advocacy programmes and actions.

In 2024, we organised nationwide "teach me climate" for over 150 students across different regions to build their knowledge on climate issues due to climate education not included in our elementary school systems. We have opened call for Green Solutions for youth-led NGOs to receive funding to implement their climate ideas and also organising #Earth4Art events to promote the use of Art to communicate climate messages amongst others. We will be hosting the first National Children and Youth Conference on Climate Change in partnership with UNICEF Gambia in 2024 where we will also develop a children and youth climate engagement strategy for stakeholders.

WHY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT

There is an increasing climate crisis due to the annual low turn over in the agricultural productivity for local communities. We had revelations from children during our ‘’TEACH ME CLIAMTE Caravan that some students will go home during break time at school to cool off due to the amount of heat pressure around their schools. We have seen a huge lost in our flora and fauna which used to be one of our most utilized tools to market our tourism industry. The Gambia is becoming highly recognized for internally displaced persons due to constant flooding challenges which mostly affect our children and women as the most vulnerable elements of climate related disasters.

Notwithstanding, there are programs at local level to adjust adaptation and community resilience initiatives but due to limited funds and the certain inadequacy in the programmatic designs for those support interventions, we continue to struggled to adjust to the climate related challenges for children, adolescence and youth. Thus, eventually limiting the opportunity to harness the potentials of these affected children and their communities.

These challenges have necessitated such a campaign to be able to mobilize strategic partners and donors in addressing some of these challenges in a systematic order to enhance a well-coordinated, multi-sectoral approach which can help in addressing climate related challenges for our communities most especially for children and women.

DESRCIPTION OF PROGRAMMES TO BE IMPLEMENTED

1. SUMMER GO GREEN: We will mobilize children, youth, CSOs and communities to annually coordinate effective forest restoration programs in the summer. This initiative will be coordinated in collaboration with the regional authorities and plant 200,000 trees in the next 3 years using the SUMMER GO GREEN initiative.

2. TEACH ME CLIMATE: Capacity building is a fundamental element in addressing challenges faced. Climate Change education is at a low rate in The Gambia despite efforts by to mainstreamed it in elementary education still futile, this will be an opportunity to train 5,000 people including children and youth for a period of five years This initiative will be a series of training sessions to be held in various schools and community centres to educate young people about climate change, its impacts, and what they can do to address it. The training will enable students and children, especially in basic and junior schools to understand climate change as they are not incorporated in our basic education system.

3. SCHOOL GREENING PROJECT: This is a call to plant trees which will help provide cool spaces in schools, especially for schools in the provinces due to changing climates during certain time of the year. We have heard from students haring that they stay home sometimes and missing their classes due to the rise in temperature. This project will target 200 schools with each school to have 200 trees around the school and at least 100 meters from the schools to have trees. We will also have flowers and other amenities in this project to support a beautification component of the schools to make it more eco-friendly.