Young Reporters for the Environment (YRE) is a platform for those aged between 11 and 25 years to research environmental issues and promote solutions through investigative reporting, photography and video journalism. It is coordinated by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), headquartered in Denmark.
“We engage with the student community through campaigns and competitions,” says Madhavi Joshi, senior programme director, Centre for Environment Education, which is the national operator running YRE programmes in India since 2015.
Every year, YRE conducts an international competition that is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, where best entries received at the national level compete with those from over 40 other countries.
“Through the event we conduct various activities both individually and institution-based where we have mentors (teachers) who help achieve various outcomes. The output could be in the form of a piece of journalistic writing or a photo story or video,” says Madhavi.
One of the larger goals of the competition is to encourage participants to involve in on-ground campaigns. She says every year they have many Indian students winning in different categories. Certificates or prizes are awarded to the best article, photograph and video in each of the three age categories, and international workshops are also held.
“Over the last two years, we have been working with 80-100 institutions,” she says, adding that every year new students on an average constitute 70%.”
YRE Hub is a space on the global platform for YRE alumni and the other youth who are not participating in the competition, to send articles. “YRE also gets to participate as reporters in conferences like the recent CoP,” says Madhavi.
For details, visit https://sayen.org/ YRE-india.html
Published - November 14, 2021 03:56 pm IST
