Where: Nigeria, Burundi, Rwanda, Ghana, Fiji, Pakistan, Eswatini, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, South Sudan
Area of solutions: Biodiversity and nature-based solutions; Sustainable cities and communities; Education and advocacy; Reduction in pollution; Climate technology; Youth
Community Action Against Plastic Waste (CAPWs) is on a mission to build the largest community of climate youth leaders in the world. The initiative through its “RestorationX10000” project aims to empower ten thousand (10,000) youths to lead community efforts to reduce plastic waste while creating meaningful income for young people within their community by 2025.
CAPWs empowers young people all over the world to develop strategies, leadership skills, collaborations, institutions, and to build resilient community in achieving net zero position with the environment and help proliferate the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Which groups of people and how many people did you reach?
This organization has operations in more than 15 countries now and across 3 regions. CAPWs has a growing number of over 500 youth leaders organizing cleanup activities and community outreach programs to help combat the menace of plastic pollution in our environment. So far, CAPWs programs have cleaned up about 12 areas including water bodies like oceans, beaches, rivers, and lakes. Others include schools, local communities, and farmlands. CAPWs has also had successful exchanges of over 20,000kg of plastic and mixed-waste items between the organization’s teams and landfills, upcycling, and recycling agents within our networks.
What changes resulted? (Feel free to provide specific numbers whenever possible but otherwise, please share what changes resulted such as awareness-raising, policy change, actions inspired etc.)
CAPWs is witnessing an increase in the involvement of youths in taking actions against climate change. The organization’s strategy of trying to incentive these activities has rekindled a new hope for economic empowerment and sustainable development.
CAPWs has also seen the amount of creativity that has gone into ensuring that more people get involved in different localities increase. CAPWs has various ways to recruit participants, ranging from the use of digital platforms for creating awareness and reporting exercises to exploring the energy and curiosity of students in their formative years to directly working with local community leaders in engaging with their indigenes.
What obstacles, if any, did you face and overcome while implementing the project? Please share any lessons learned and stories on how you overcame obstacles.
As a growing organization, CAPWs is facing significant challenges with accessing funds and trying to establish collaborations with environmental agencies, corporate organizations, and public sector organizations. The former is with respect to mobilization of teams for different clean up exercises as well as financing the internal systems of the organization across the various countries of operation.
CAPWs has also experienced some hinderances from governments of different nations. This organization has however realized that it needs to capitalize on the access they have to local leaders in driving initiatives while taking steps to complete incorporation requirements with the appropriate authorities.
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