The Cari-Bois En­vi­ron­men­tal News Net­work is de­vel­op­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists to raise aware­ness of cli­mate change is­sues.

Over the next eight months, the Cari-Bois En­vi­ron­men­tal News Net­work, with sup­port from The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, will work with ten sec­ondary schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go to equip 20 stu­dents with jour­nal­ism skills and cli­mate knowl­edge.

With fund­ing from the Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion, the project aims for each stu­dent to write and pub­lish three cli­mate sto­ries that high­light the im­pacts and re­spons­es to cli­mate change in their com­mu­ni­ties.

These sto­ries will be pub­lished un­der the Green Gazette and pro­mot­ed on the so­cial me­dia plat­forms of Cari-Bois and The Crop­per Foun­da­tion.

Cindy Mo­hammed, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion, states that sup­port­ing the project aligns with the Foun­da­tion’s mis­sion to con­nect young peo­ple with op­por­tu­ni­ties.

She adds, “Not on­ly is the project help­ing to cre­ate aware­ness of ca­reer op­tions and ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties in the fields of jour­nal­ism and en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ences for our young peo­ple, but it is al­so en­cour­ag­ing them to build skills and aware­ness to help fight cli­mate change in their com­mu­ni­ties. When they learn about these top­ics, they will be em­pow­ered to take col­lab­o­ra­tive ac­tion, help­ing to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

Green Gazette will fo­cus on de­vel­op­ing the sto­ry­telling skills of young peo­ple from rur­al, se­mi-rur­al, and coastal com­mu­ni­ties, which are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change.

The 20 par­tic­i­pants come from a range of schools, in­clud­ing Blan­chisseuse Sec­ondary, Brazil Sec­ondary, Ce­dros Sec­ondary, Coryal Sec­ondary, Guayagua­yare Sec­ondary, Moru­ga Sec­ondary, Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary, Rox­bor­ough Sec­ondary, Spey­side Sec­ondary, and Williamsville Sec­ondary.

The project fea­tures a hy­brid cur­ricu­lum of on­line train­ing and in-per­son ac­tiv­i­ties, de­liv­ered to two co­horts of five schools each. The first co­hort is run­ning from Sep­tem­ber to De­cem­ber 2024, while the sec­ond will take place from Jan­u­ary to April 2025.

Vir­tu­al ses­sions will cov­er the ba­sics of jour­nal­ism, an in­tro­duc­tion to cli­mate change, and writ­ing tips. Pre­sen­ters in­clude UWI lec­tur­er Dr. Lor­raine Wal­dropt-Fer­gu­son, jour­nal­ist Ryan Ba­choo, cli­mate jour­nal­ism con­sul­tant Kalain Ho­sein, and EMA En­vi­ron­men­tal Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Reyad Mo­hammed.

The Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion will al­so host a work­shop on Oc­to­ber 19 fo­cus­ing on fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.

Omar Mo­hammed, CEO of The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, states, “Our man­date has al­ways been to shape young lead­ers. We are in­ten­tion­al­ly in­vest­ing in the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers who un­der­stand the ur­gency of cli­mate jus­tice and its im­pli­ca­tions for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States like ours.”

He adds, “That’s why it’s cru­cial to have a part­ner like Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion sup­port this work.”

Green Gazette builds on the 2023 pi­lot project “I Want to Be an En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­porter,” which was con­duct­ed in four com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go.