Borrowing from the Future:

*Borrowing from the future: Engaging teen-climate ambassador to highlight local impacts and solutions to climate change in Kenya.* *_Introduction_* Climate change and its impact on people's lives and resources pose serious challenges both on the global and local scales. In Kenya the effects of climate change are experienced in almost every corner of the country but more so in rural which are primarily dependent on agriculture for livelihoods. In recent years, we have seen an increase in erratic weather patterns such as long dry spells and drought, heavy rains associated with heavy flooding, land and mudslides. These lead to massive destruction of resources, properties and decimating livelihoods in both urban and rural areas and disrupting personal, and social lives of many Kenyans. The net effects of these include famine, precarious livelihoods for small scale farmers and other agri-based businesses. In these situations, children's lives are disproportionately affected through disruption of families, loss of parent's livelihoods and education. The actions we take today can greatly influence the future climate and ease the negative impacts of climate change. We may also be able to ease our abilities to adapt and respond to the impacts of and reduce vulnerabilities of our communities to climate change. Importantly, our collective voice can amplify the effort to call our governments to take political and economic actions to reduce greenhouse emissions and thus reduce the magnitude of climate change. An important point to ensuring a sustainable movement for climate change ambassador is to build a critical mass of youngsters that can continually mobilise and educate the public on the importance of implementing climate smart solutions. Our proposal is to engage high schoolers (ages 13 – 17 years) in Kenya to participate in a climate change online training. This training will be a web-based interactive training on various concepts of climate change, its impact at global and local levels and possible solutions to curb climate change. The students will then be given an assessment through the same platforms and those who pass will be given a certificate of participation, and maybe qualified as young climate ambassadors in their respective schools and communities. The initial target will be to have at least 100 students participate in the online training and certification. At the end of the training, the participants will also be given a chance to crowdsource information (Essays, short-messages, images, short-videos) on the impact of climate change in their locality through an online platform (#Wedon'thavetime, #twitter, website?). Furthermore, for the best 10 participants, we will visit their locality and issue them with a camera through which they can continue to participate in crowdsourcing impacts and solutions to climate change at the grassroot levels using a citizen journalism approach. *_What to do?_* To be able to achieve this we will need:  Design an easy to navigate and access website with information on climate change in both English and Kiswahili - This would benefit from a collaboration with a good web/graphic/mobile app designer who would assist.  Adopt a child-friendly online curriculum on climate change.  Build awareness on the training through social media and targeted schools in two pilot counties: (Nairobi - Urban, and Kilifi - Rural/coastal) and enrol at least 50 students from each of the schools.  Offer the online training through video-interactive platform (zoom/skype) as well as self-taught options. *_Potential collaborations_* 1. Web//mobile app programmers and graphic designers 2. Fundraising 3. Organisation that can co-host/amplify the crowdsourced stories on local impacts and solutions to climate change 4. Organisations/individuals who may wish to be patrons of the initiatives and co-issue the certificates for ambassadors. 5. Curriculum review for standardization 6. Open to suggestion on how to collaborate on other areas. Idea well thought and Compiled by-:) Patrick Kiarie Nyokabi pakinyok@gmail.com And Robert Ndungu

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