Building the Climate Conversation – in Cyberspace and the Real World

Editor’s Note: This Friday, you can participate virtually in a World Bank awards ceremony celebrating youth engagement in creative climate action. Check out a short promo video for the Washington, D.C. event, called Connect4Climate: Right Here, Right Now, and click to watch the live feed on March 1 from 6 to 9 p.m.

The World Bank may have found its “hip” voice with a new campaign called Connect4Climate, which uses social media, blogs, video and music to reach young audiences and build an online conversation about climate change. Campaign sponsors include the World Bank, Italian Ministry of the Environment and Global Environment Facility and dozens of partners.

In this awards season, the “Right Here, Right Now” event Friday in Washington, D.C., will feature an awards ceremony with MTV’s Izzy Lawrence for the ‘Voices4Climate’ project, including more than 1000 submissions of videos, music and photographs about climate change. (The votes are already being tallied, but you can peruse the submissions from all over the world.)

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim will offer remarks at the event. And, of course, there will be musical performances: the launch of a C4C special edition Rhythms del Mundo: Africa charity CD, live performances by Kenyan
rappers TS1 and award-winning Malian musician Rokia Traore.

You can follow the Connect4Climate conversation, and the awards event, on Twitter with the hashtag #c4climate.

Lisa Hayden is a blogger for The Nature Conservancy

Featured photo by Flickr user Duda Arraes (This photo from Sierra
Leone won the World Bank Connect4Climate photo contest with “How Climate Change is Affecting Africa?” as the main theme. Women are often the ones who must walk kilometers every day under a harsh sun to get clean water. Used under a Creative Commons license.)