Local community member Dominique Noralez was recently accepted to attend the first-ever UN Youth Climate Summit in New York City on Saturday, September 21. The historic event will be a platform for young leaders who are driving climate action to showcase their solutions at the United Nations and to meaningfully engage with decision-makers on the defining issue of our time. It will be the largest gathering of young climate leaders at the UN in history.
Over 7,000 young people between the ages of 18 to 29 applied to attend the Youth Climate Summit. Dominique was one of 500 hundred young people from around the world selected to attend the Summit after demonstrating their commitment to addressing the climate crisis and displaying leadership in advancing solutions. Another brilliant young Belizean will also be in attendance, Khadija Usher.
The Youth Climate Summit will feature a full-day of programming that brings together young activists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and change-makers who are committed to combating climate change at the pace and scale needed to meet the challenge. It will be action oriented, intergenerational, and inclusive, with equal representation of young leaders from all walks of life.
“Youth are showing us the way on climate action,” said Special Envoy for the 2019 Climate Action Summit, Luis Alfonso de Alba. “I am eager for young climate leaders from all over the world to take their rightful place on the global stage and participate in this historic moment.”
Dominique works on two fronts of the climate action – as the Youth Focal Point of the UNDP/UNOPS Global Environment Facility Small Grants Program, her focus is to make sure youth led/youth centered organizations can access funding via this medium but also that all projects that make it through all stages of the grant process have young people playing an active role in their execution. She is also the youth representative for the Caribbean Youth Environment Network on the review committee for the Caribbean Development Bank’s Youth Policy and Operational Strategy. Her second level of involvement is through Save the Seas Belize, which is an environmental literacy and marine conservation-focused organization ran for and by young people. Dominique is a great link between environmental action and youth development due to her involvement and even more so because of her indigenous heritage for which safeguarding the earth as a guiding principle of her Garifuna Ethnicity.
Join me as I, along with partners Department of Youth Services and Save the Seas Belize, host an awareness building and idea sharing consultation on September 13th 2019 and a community action- Coastal Clean-Up on September 14th 2019. Register here: https://forms.gle/Gq1P7dQM4PWQeejAA
“The earth is our only home and small developing countries like mine experience the most immediate and devastating effects from hurricanes to droughts. Climate Change is an issue of urgency that affects each human’s livelihood; it requires paramount and equally urgent coordinated action to alleviate and combat. This summit is a space to share and advocate for that action.” –Dominique Noralez
