YLEC Uganda’s Projects and Campaigns
Major Projects
We have undertaken projects since 2013 and continue to do so as the years pass. Our projects are based on the thematic areas that we operate in that is Climate Change, Clean Energy, Food Security, Environmental Art and Technology, and Waste Management. The major projects include the following:
Clean Environment Initiative Project (CEIP) 2 2020-2023
CEIP 2 is the second phase for CEIP 1. The main objective of the project is to combat environmental degradation and promote sustainable development by fostering students’ environmental consciousness in Soroti district. The project is implemented by YLEC Uganda alongside and (SwB Denmark). The project a three year project to be implemented in 20 secondary schools within Soroti district.
Building Stewardship and Resilient Ecosystems through Participatory Integrated Planning Approaches 2019 – 2020
This project focuses on the Manafwa watershed in Eastern Uganda, which covers part of the Mount Elgon National Park, and is impacted by increasingly frequent landslides, loss of forest reserves, soil degradation and droughts. The urgency to conserve and restore the watershed’s ecosystem services to a stable state of land degradation neutrality is huge given the recent landslide devastation. To tackle this challenge, mobilizing the local population is key, from farmers to policy-makers, at all institutional levels. This requires a bottom-up participatory approach, in which generating intrinsic motivation, commitment and collaboration to invest in the watershed are crucial using Participatory integrated planning approaches (PIP). The PIP motivates farmers to transform their reality by conscious collective action mainly by vision and capacity building to plan for a more sustainable future. This starts at farm level with investments in sustainable agriculture, and then quickly expands to village level and the entire watershed through farmer-to-farmer transfer of this intrinsic motivation to invest and farmers’ knowledge of innovative best practices. As such, the PIP approach achieves sustainable wide-scale change, not only in what people do, but mainly in how people behave and manage the watershed, with sustainable agriculture and collaboration as a solid foundation.
YLEC’s role in the project is knowledge building and passing on environmental education activities of the project. It will particularly train youth and Bachelor of Geographical Sciences students from Makerere University in Participatory Integrated techniques to environmental conservation as a novel tool to ecosystem stewardship and resilience building among natural resource-dependent local communities.
Clean Environment Initiative Project (CEIP) 1 2018-2019
CEIP 1 is a two-year project implemented by YLEC, and JEEP and (SwB Denmark). The project is implemented in seven Secondary Schools in Soroti municipality. The project is meant to create awareness to influence schools and students’ behavioural change in clean cooking, proper waste management, and tree planting as a way to combat environment degradation in Soroti District. This includes capacity development and advocacy activities in the schools and at the district level.
YLEC has implemented the project with monitoring from JEEP and SwB. They have undertaken training and awareness to several groups within the project. In this a total of 315 students from the environmental clubs have been actively engaged and have acquired practical skills in waste management, tree planning and energy stove construction. School administrators, municipality, district and religious leaders have been exposed to environmental awareness too.
Environmental Awareness Project (EAP) 2015-2019
The EAP project was implemented by Seniors without Borders (SwB Denmark), Nordiforcenter and JEEP. The project aimed at creating awareness and actions for change about the causes and solutions to the environmental problems which characterized the rural areas in Uganda. This included capacity development and advocacy at all levels of the community. Having registered YLEC as partners in 2014, JEEP worked with YLEC to implement the project since it involved fellow youth.
The EAP, considered youth of the age of 15-30, in 6 districts in Eastern Uganda and Karamoja region. These districts were Budaka, Bududa, Bulamburi, Kapchorwa, Mbale, and Moroto. The project enabled us to train 330 youth in the 11 sub-counties in water management, food security, energy saving technology, tree planting, and agro-waste management. Sub-county leaders and district leaders were also targeted for awareness training in order to support the youth. In addition to the training, YLEC members engaged in follow-up from whence they got information on how the project was fairing helping them thoughtfully craft solutions to implement in other projects.
Community Outreaches on Energy Stoves – 2013
After the Youth Leading Environmental Change workshop on 3rd November 2012, having been trained in construction of the energy saving stoves by Joint Energy and Environment Projects (JEEP) , YLEC Uganda furthered their efforts of creating awareness on the use of renewable energy technologies. In 2013, with assistance from the technical personnel from Centre for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation (CREEC), they reached out to implement energy stove construction for elderly people. Later the outreach was moved to a community in Butambala district, were about 20 people were trained in constructing energy saving stoves.
Campaigns
Campaigns are also projects carried out at the YLEC Uganda to achieve short term objectives. Most of the campaings we have engaged in as an organisation have related to waste management where we have carried out clean-ups in several places. Another interesting element of the campaigns carried out by YLEC is that they are not always organised by our organisation. Many times we are invited to carry out campaigns in support of other organisations. And just like the major projects, our campaigns are based on the organisation’s thematic or focus areas. Below are the campaigns carried out by our organisation over the years:
Clean up activity on Kawempe Market
On Saturday 2nd November 2019, between 9:00am and 12:30pm, YLEC carried out a cleanup activity in Kawempe Market with the objective to promote proper solid waste management in the market. We greatly appreciate the support and time spared to make the activity a success.
Clean up activity on Kawala Health Center
On , 12th August 2019, on the international youth day, YLEC- Uganda teamed up with; Teens-Uganda, Kawala Teenage and Youth Center, Africa Youth Development Link, Kawala Health Center staff to clean up Kawala Heath Center as a way of promoting environmental and occupation health and safety in communities. Other environmental education engagements of the day included but not limited to; having a youth round table dialogue on environmental health management, entertainment from the youth groups as long as washing environmental documentaries.
Clean up at Bunyonyi and Naguru
On the 17th of August,2019, With support from Kampala Capital City Authority, YLEC Uganda together with Tokens of Life-Uganda, Muli Afrika, Tree Adoption-Uganda, KIWANSI International, Holy Trinity Church-Kamwokya, ECHO Youth, Makerere University Students Waste Management Associationand Kamwokya community members had clean up activity at Kamwokya community as a way to commemorate the Year’s “Environmental Day”.
Tree planting in Nakaseke district
On 26th May 2019, YLEC-UGANDA in support of Tree Adoption-Uganda planted in Nakaseke District through a community outreach. It was great meeting new people from Access, Youth Twejukanye, and Token of Lives Uganda. Great thanks to YLEC Uganda members that represented us, keep up the great work #worldmerit.
JEEP Envirotech Day
On 11th August 2018, YLEC joined JEEP Uganda in celebrating the Envirotech day. YLEC members that worked along with JEEP staff on this colourful day. It was a day for learning and exhibiting some of the best renewable energy technologies, and receiving feedback from our guests. This was a great initiative for both the organisations
SIMA movie event
On 12th July 2018, YLEC Uganda together with JEEP screened a movie and held environmental dialogue with youth at JEEC folkecenter in Kyanja. “Using clean energy is not only for your health and environment, it also saves you a lot of money”, Ruth Kiwanuka, guest speaker SIMA KAMPALA noted at the event. It was wonderful listening to the passionate participants air out their views on accessibility and availability of renewable technologies. This was further enriched with a dialogue on use of nuclear energy in Uganda’s Context.
