#Heart4Climate T&T
On Friday 27 and Saturday 28 October, IAMovement hosted the POS Climathon along with Mora Carbon, alongside 100+ events globally, organized by Europe based Climate-KIC and ended with another exciting activity which you have seen before, this year being called #Heart4Climate!
The chosen topic for the Port of Spain Climathon which eight (8) local teams hacked innovative ideas and solutions for, is Food Security: Urban Agriculture and Greening the City. These ideas were meant to be practical and implementable, and through the event and some of the awards we will be helping to showcase the winning ideas to public and private stakeholders in the city of Port of Spain and around T&T, who can help make them a reality. After the teams completed the 24-hour Climathon event, with their final pitches and selection of winners, we moved from the Climathon venue at QRC onto the Savannah for prize giving and closing remarks, green entertainment from several surprise artists, and the formation of another beautiful #Heart4Climate.
We created another beautiful #Heart4Climate – only this time standing alongside the rest of the world!
Global networks also created #Hearts4Climate to stand with the Caribbean islands recently ravaged by record breaking hurricanes, driven by climate change.
Climate-KIC, the global organizers of Climathon invited all of the 100+ events worldwide to also create a #Heart4Climate during their 24 hr events to stand alongside the Caribbean! And through our regional partnership networks with Global Shapers Port of Spain, Together WI, and the Caribbean Youth Environmental Network, we invited friends, colleagues and associates throughout our Caribbean region to make their own #Heart4Climate to stand together in shining a light on the Climate Realities which we can no longer ignore.
A hurricane relief item and agricultural seeds drive led by the Global Shapers Port of Spain Hub and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture was held in tandem with the #Heart4Climate event and we invited the public to bring items to donate to the Caribbean islands affected by hurricanes.
While all our Caribbean neighbours have acknowledged the realities of Climate Change and mankind’s need to act, Trinidad & Tobago is one of the 29 countries out of 197 parties to the UN Convention who have not ratified the Paris Climate Agreement – putting us among the 15% minority of countries whom are not committing to global climate action – and which also shows no great respect to our brothers and sisters facing consequences of climate change. Additional to our lack of action to help reduce the climate change effect – by not engaging in the conversation we are also ignoring important realities which the rest of the Caribbean is now greatly realizing, which is the need to adapt and become more resilient to changing climate. This include matters of Food Security which is the theme of this year’s POS Climathon.
See here also for a downloadable PDF on How to create your own #Heart4Climate, no matter how big or small!