The goal is to engage the energy, enthusiasm and values of youth on issues related to infrastructural development such as roads, drains, sewage, dams, national parks to from personal lifestyles and to work with their communities, the private sector and government to make significant inroads on reducing emissions.
BROAD OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
The broad objective is to provide young people and youth with information on climate change and what they can do about it using the linkages between road transport, tree planting and sanitation as major components; providing the opportunities to work on concrete projects to make a difference, and recognition and rewards for their work towards emissions reduction.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT
- To facilitate a concept of environmental citizenship among Ghanaian youth, through the integration of knowledge, sense of responsibility and successful action to mitigate climate change impact.
- To create and strengthen our young leaders, both to learn from them now and to prepare them to become tomorrow’s decision makers.
- To reinforce and reward existing environmentally friendly lifestyles among youth, thereby delaying or reducing the adoption of greenhouse gas emitting practices among Ghanaians.
- To strengthen and build upon existing institutions and services for young Ghanaians, both to recognize and reward work already being done, to support new work within those institutions, to avoid duplication, and to avoid drawing funding away from current activities.
- To integrate Ghanaian youth efforts into the global effort to gain global recognition and support.
PROJECT STRATEGY
The project focuses on two components in this strategy:
- Raising awareness among young people and youth about climate change, its causes and potential impacts, and advocate on what individuals can do to reduce emissions using the linkages between road transport, tree planting and sanitation as major components.
- Motivating youth to take actions within their communities to reduce emissions and to encourage others in their lives (peers, families, communities) to reduce emissions using the linkages between road transport, tree planting and sanitation.
The project focuses of the following campaign strategy and issues
- Awareness Creation – which intersects with the broader information, awareness and advocacy campaigns on the issues below;
- Advocate for recycle of at least 25% of the volume of plastic waste which chock gutters and drains and cause flooding, create potholes, erosion and destroy roads in the country. This also aims to improve on the sanitation and environmental degradation situation in the country.
- Call for improvement in the road transportation system and the needed support for alternative transportation methods to the car culture in the country to reduce the heavy traffic congestion, high consumption of fuel, waste of time and the huge CO2 emission.
- Contribute to the enhancement of energy efficiency and conservation through the use of energy saving bulbs, reducing wastage of electricity and other domestic fuels.
- Promote nature conservation and greenly environment through positive connections of the youth with the environment by planting trees along selected roads, within selected parks and along some rivers and water bodies personal.
- Mainstream media campaigns, both to profile and reward participants, and to catalyze them to take notice of the problem and look for more information and ways to become engaged.
- Mainstream special promotions and events, emphasizing novelty and entertainment.
PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION STRUCTURE / STRATEGY
The project implementation structure /strategy will be in two (2) phases.
Phase I
Phase I will be within YYYY and YYYY, and is the general advocacy phase and will be in five (5) parts:
- Expansion of Green-Life Clubs in schools from the Basic to Senior High level to provide;
- Capacity building for youth groups
- Information and awareness campaigns
- Community actions
- Evaluation of the phase
Phase II
Phase II will be for specific advocacy on ensuring protection, long duration and safety on a specific adopted road. Trees will be planted and maintained along the full stretch of the road by groups of students and youth clubs within the communities along the road. The trees and greens along the road will be evaluated and awards given to groups whose portions are well maintained.
Capacity Building Strategy
The strategy is to reinforce youth’s current awareness of environmental matters such as littering of gutters and drains with plastic waste, cutting down trees indiscriminately, bush burning, road traffic congestion and huge CO2 emission rather than focusing just on climate change. It will highlight individual causes and effects on climate change, illustrating its local, national and global dimensions and impacts and how they affect the economy and our way of life. The strategy is to encourage widespread dissemination of information on environmental issues to continue awareness raising and sharing of values and viewpoints of the youth. It will connect the need to mitigate or adapt to climate change to ensure employment opportunities and show how an environmentally-friendly lifestyle improves on health, and make the world a better place at the same time. It will put national climate change strategy into global context to build on the global perspectives and concerns of youth, but connect the strategy back to the community and how they affect them personally.
The strategy will focus on events designing and implementation of activities that can involve and allows more youth to participate in, but for shorter periods of time – requiring less time commitment. Empowering them on means to form and enhance alliances and partnerships between themselves and governments, private sector, educational system, NGO’s, churches, sports groups. This will include, especially, how to develop collaboration, communication and coordination between them and stakeholders who deal with similar issues.
Communications, Social Marketing and Engagement Strategies
The strategy focuses on the youth as leaders and influencers on adults and on their peers, and as participants working for change within their communities and country. This is an engagement strategy rather than a marketing strategy. The goal of communications and social marketing strategies is to bring about change from diverse ideas and behavior or adoption of new ideas and behavior. It is generally accepted that these strategies are most effective when media and information campaigns are combined with personal interventions with the target group. The strategy therefore looked carefully at a model of engagement: how to turn knowledge into action, how small individual actions can be aggregated for greater benefit; and how to ensure that the actions will have longer term benefits for the community, the country and the planet.
MOBILIZATION STRATEGY FOR PHASE I (MEDIA-ORIENTED & ADVOCACY SUB-PROJECTS
The strategy is to mobilize the youth (membership of the Green-Life Clubs) and stakeholders around four (4) major media-oriented and advocacy sub-projects. The strategy includes focusing sub-project concepts on the little things the youth can do to have an impact on climate change. The sub-projects will help the youth to identify good environmental/climate change practices, what works and what doesn’t work, and reward what does – through prizes, press releases, internet communications, and so forth. The sub-projects will provide incentives and rewards for youth who are making an impact in their community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because it reinforces their positive behavior. Media attention is given to the concepts to broadcast their inspiring stories of successes which are important to let the youth know that they are working as a team with other peers and with older Ghanaians, not only as individuals.
Plastic Waste Audit Campaign (PWAC) for recycle of plastic waste
Gutters and drains across the country are chocked with plastic wastes, causing damaging floods which cause destruction to home, properties and infrastructure such as roads with potholes and erosion. The members of the Green-Life Clubs will mobilize plastic waste generated in their homes within a one week period and bring them to school. These plastic wastes will be collected from the schools and put into a single pool. The membership will also undertake signature collection campaign within their schools to support the demand greater commitment and political will towards recycling at least 25% of plastic wastes produced in the country. The collected plastic wastes and signatures will be presented by a youth delegation to the Ministers of Environment, Local Government and Education, and the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at a campaign launch. Representatives of other relevant stakeholders such Embassies, NGOs, religious and traditional bodies will be invited. The collected plastic waste will be given to companies involved in recycling. Call will be made to the general public not to be throwing plastic waste unto roads and streets.
Energy Audit and Efficiency Enhancement Campaign
Membership of the Green-Life Clubs will undertake one-months community outreach which will educated both family and community members on energy usage and efficiency and encourage them to change their ‘onion’ bulbs to energy saving bulbs. Prizes will be given to each member who will present the cases of an energy saving bulb and an onion’ bulb as evidence of work done for educational and promotional materials such as pencils, pens, rulers, exercise books and T-shirts; the grater the number of evidence the grater the prize. Collected cases and ‘onion’ bulbs will be presented to the Minister of Energy and personnel from Energy Commission, Energy Foundation and Electricity Corporation of Ghana for destruction in media event.
Clean-up the Community Campaign (CCC)
Membership of the Green-Life Clubs in each of the nine (9) Metropolis, Municipality and District in the Greater Accra Region will undertake joint clean-up exercise and clean the drains and gutters along selected streets and roads within their community. The clean-up exercise will be done with the collaboration of their respective Assemblies, and other stakeholder institutions and organizations such as youth groups, religious groups, traditional councils, security personnel within the locality.
Road Transport Improvement and Environmental Conservation Campaign (RTI&ECC)
There is increasing number of cars on our roads causing huge traffic congestion, full consumption and polluting the air with CO2. The membership of the Green-Life Clubs numbering over one thousand (1,000) will undertake a road show campaign with a convoy of over twenty (20) big buses to draw attention to increasing stress on our roads and its environmental and economic cost. The campaign will call for effective bus transportation services as alternative to the car culture. The convoy will start from the Kwame Nkrumah Circle to the xxx Dam proceed to the xxxx Park in the Central Region. The road campaign will highlight the adverse impact of climate change on biodiversity and demand greater commitment from all stakeholders. Participants with the collaboration of managers will also plant trees along portions of the road, the banks of the xxxx Dam and also at the xxxx Park. Representatives of stakeholder institutions and bodies, celebrities and the Media will be invited for their participation in the road show.
The road show mainstreams media campaigns and raises the needed awareness whiles rewarding the youth, providing them the opportunity to take notice of the problem and look for more information and ways to become engaged. It is also a special promotional event that emphasizes novelty and entertainment as members who participated in the other campaign actives will rewarded.
PROJECT EVALUATION
The strategy has an impact evaluation system in place to learn the effect of the strategy on youth, and to provide means by which youth can provide feedback and input. A good baseline data will be established at the beginning of this strategy and evaluation of increased levels of knowledge, awareness and action at the end of the strategy. It is important to reflect that early evaluation may miss some of the long term benefits on youth participation efforts is an ongoing and developmental process. While recognizing that concrete outcomes take time, it is also difficult to attribute attitude and behavior changes solely to such campaigns when other extraneous factors can also be strong influences on behaviors and attitudes.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
- The social marketing campaigns will be evaluated for creating a positive and significant impact according to the following criteria:
- Awareness – A broad awareness of the campaign, its theme and basic messages among youth
- Attitudes – A general acceptance of the campaign messages among youth
- Behavioral intentions – Discernable differences in intended behaviors the youth exposed to the campaign than that were not exposed to the campaign
- Interpersonal communications –Demonstrated increased willingness and commitment to disseminating information on the issues to others among youth as exposed to the campaign
- Current use – Discernable differences in behaviors that can be currently changed, such as taking the bus, carpooling, using appliances efficiently and other personal contributions
- Trends – A development of general trends in attitudes and behaviors, especially among the targeted audience
- Use of Campaigns as Models – Adoption of strategies or specific projects by groups not included in the strategy, or by groups wanting to adapt strategies or specific projects for campaigns on different issues and topics and requests for expertise or consultancies
Testing of indicators would be completed by the following qualitative and quantitative methods:
- Tracking surveys for individual projects
- Tracking surveys for the strategy
- Tracking surveys for youth to measure their increased awareness and knowledge of climate change issues before the campaign, mid-way and upon completion.
- Formal and informal discussions with young people and adults, using focus groups, consultations, conferences, throughout the time frame of the strategy.
