Students from 24 schools spent five days learning about the environment and the problems facing the planet in Egypt's most environmentally-friendly holiday destination, El-Gouna in the Hurghada governorate, recently. The students were taking part in the United Nations Seventh Annual Youth Conference for the Environment and Biodiversity, or “Let's Take Care of the Planet,” held earlier this month in El-Gouna. Let's Take Care of the Planet (LTCP) is an initiative aimed at promoting environmental citizenship for children and young people, aiming to engage them in debates on environmental issues and the global community. The LTCP is an international initiative originating from the experience of national conferences first held in Brazil in 2003. The initiative then shifted to the Arab states, and the first LTCP-UN conference in Egypt was held in March 2010 in Alexandria. The project runs in 75 countries under the umbrella of the United Nations Global Compact. This year's Conference focussed on topics of biodiversity, the variety of life found on earth, water management, and recycling electronic and solid waste, said Amal Rizk, general coordinator of the LTCP-UN. For each topic, a handful of experts instructed the students through workshops, after which they went on field trips to try to implement what they had learned during the sessions. “Our conference is about sustainability. The students are obliged to implement what they have learnt by starting their own projects in their schools or communities,” Rizk told Al-Ahram Weekly. “It's not just a question of educational awareness. There is also practical implementation,” she added. The impact of conferences of this sort, Rizk said, was epitomised in “having a 10-year-old student sitting in a session learning about water management where he has all the relevant information available to him.” Participating in the conference were Stephanie Refaat and Reham Baddar, 16, students at Alexandria's Qawmeya School. Both said that the conference was a rewarding experience in which they had learnt to depend on themselves away from their school and teachers. “We learned a lot of facts that we didn't know about, and we realised that Egypt has a lot of valuable resources that should be preserved,” Baddar said. Refaat said that she had learnt about the Red Sea's natural resources “that could attract many tourists to Egypt.” This year's conference also hosted Miss Earth 2013, Alyz Henrich, as a special guest. After coming a long way from Venezuela to Egypt to participate in the conference, Henrich said that “it's an honour for me to be here, because there are a lot of nice activities and workshops.” Throughout the conference, Henrich engaged in discussions with the delegates on environment and culture and on her experience as Miss Earth. On March 10, she led a workshop on waste and waste recycling in Abu Monkar, a protected island in the Red Sea. Henrich explained that the Miss Earth competition was different from other beauty pageants, as it was mainly concerned with helping the earth. In order to enter the Miss Earth contest, the contestants had had to carry out environmental advocacy in their countries. “My dream is to take care of the planet because it's my home, your home and everybody's home,” Henrich told the Weekly. She said that scarcity of water was the most serious problem facing the earth in her view because it was essential to all aspects of life. The LTCP-UN Conference is to be held twice this year, the first time as a national conference in March compromising mainly Egyptian students and the second time as an international conference in October hosting participants from all over the world. The international conference was held last year in Sharm El-Sheikh, and it brought together over 600 delegates from 34 countries. Rizk said that the places where the conferences are held should meet special criteria. “The place should be green with no pollution, and it should be able to host environmentally-friendly activities,” she said. Rizk stated that the El-Gouna hotels were holders of Green Star Certification, an award scheme given to hotels which are successfully improving their environmental performance by saving valuable resources and cutting down on waste. The scheme concentrates on environmental management, water and energy use and staff training, among other requirements, she added. “It's very important to choose a place that matches the criteria we are working with,” Rizk noted. The students participating in this year's conference are aged between 10 and 24 years old and come from Alexandria, Hurghada, Cairo and Sharm El-Sheikh. Although the March conference was a national one, several other nationalities joined in just the same, and the conference had included participation by students from Germany, Italy, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Rizk said that in order to take part in the conference students should have carried out a project or activity in any field in their community. Students from state schools could join for free. “We normally send our criteria to the Ministry of Education, which then selects suitable students. This year we have 60 public school students,” Rizk said. “The conference also offers scholarships for students who have done good work, where we cover 60 per cent of expenses,” she added.
