St Georges, 3/09/19

On Friday 30th and Saturday 31st August, the Caribbean Youth Environment Network in Grenada (CYEN Grenada) held a Young Professional Programme to inform Grenadian young professionals of the country’s climate change agenda and train them in the field of climate finance. This two-day workshop is the first phase of a comprehensive capacity building exercise that has been entrusted to CYEN Grenada under the Getting Grenada Green Climate Fund ready (3G) Programme.

In the face of the increasing threat caused by climate change, Grenada has set up an ambitious adaptation and mitigation agenda which is backed by its climate finance strategy. With this programme, CYEN Grenada helped identify and train young professionals with substantial baseline knowledge for the implementation of this climate agenda and petitioning for resources. Indeed, the availability of trained human resources will be a critical aspect of the successful implement of Grenada’s strategy and the youth represent a great untapped potential.
Facilitated by two of Grenada’s top climate experts, Dr. Thomas Spencer and Mr. Leon Charles, the training was tailored to link young professionals with senior level experts and consultants as mentors in their similar field of interest, the final goal being to establish a pool of junior-level consultants to whom short-term contracts can be awarded to work on climate finance related activities, including but not limited to concept note and proposal writing for climate change related projects.

Last week’s training session focused on baseline knowledge such as cause and impacts of climate change and the strategies to respond to it. Participants were also briefed on the functioning of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the GEF Small Grant Programme as well as the investment criteria and social safeguards from both GCF and GEF small grants.
This two-day training will be followed by four hands-on proposal written sessions during the month of September and then a period of 6 months to a year of mentoring during which young professionals will be matched with a senior experts in their fields of interest. At the end of this programme, CYEN will hold the database of trained professionals which can be accessed by senior experts when they need to recruit them for specific projects. It is hoped that this programme will ensure that the youth, which is Grenada’s largest demographic group, is actively engage in the development and implementation of Grenada climate strategy.

CYEN was identified under the 3G readiness project as the youth organization best suited to implement this young professional programme both from the perspective of the organization’s involvement with environment policies and its regional outreach. The 3G project is co-funded by the Green Climate Fund, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Government of Grenada, and is being implemented by the Grenadian Ministry of Finance, Planning, Economic Development & Physical Development in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).