Young activists from India, Mexico emerge winners of Global Youth Video Competition

Two young activists from India and Mexico, with their video reports on actions to fight climate change, have been selected as the winners of the 2018 Global Youth Video Competition on Climate Change.
The winners, chosen through an online public vote, are Vikas Yadav, 20 years old, from India for the category “Green and climate friendly jobs” and Andrea Sofia Rosales Vega, 20, from Mexico for the category “Responsible production and consumption”.
They will travel to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 24) in Katowice, Poland, in December and will work with the UN Climate Change’s Global Climate Action Team covering highlights of the meeting, reporting for a global youth audience.
The video by Sofia Vega shows how we can clean up urban areas while also making a difference to people’s lives. Her video describes the “Eco Urban” project, which collects and re-uses waste, including plastic and old clothes, helping to clean up the streets. Selling products made from the recycled material raises funds, some of which are reinvested in collection centres, and 60 per cent of the income used to fight childhood cancer. As she says at the close of the video, the participants are “ordinary people, making our world extraordinary.”
In his 3-minute entry, Vikas Yadav visits rural areas of India, where he reports that more than 70 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. As food production is particularly sensitive to climate change, the farmers explain how innovative agriculture practices can play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaption. Vikas encourages people to “Go green” in moving towards more natural growing and management techniques.
“These two young people and their videos are encouraging examples of the global climate action needed to address climate change,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa. “I congratulate Sofia Vega and Vikas, and I applaud all the entrants showcasing international youth’s essential response to climate change.”
Entries were received from over 100 countries, from Azerbaijan to Yemen, with young people between the ages of 18 and 30 submitting over 300 videos.
The competition was launched by UN Climate Change as part of its work on Action for Climate Empowerment, in partnership with tve (Television for the environment) and the Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme, which is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme, and supported by Fondation BNP Paribas and the German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt DBU).