Yvonne Ba­boolal

A young Trinida­di­an has grabbed first place in a World Bank glob­al cli­mate change mu­sic com­pe­ti­tion.Stephon Gabriel is the first place win­ner in the Voic­es4Cli­mate awards. His mu­sic video, A Chang­ing World, with its mes­sage to "rise up, unite up, to help this earth be how she used to be," was se­lect­ed from more than 1,000 en­tries from 116 coun­tries.

Gabriel was one of 19 young peo­ple from 14 coun­tries who re­ceived prizes in the com­pe­ti­tion for their pho­tographs, videos, mu­sic videos and pod­casts about cli­mate change, a World Bank re­lease said. Ap­plaud­ing the win­ners last Fri­day, World Bank Group pres­i­dent Jim Yong Kim en­cour­aged youth from around the world to take an ac­tive role in help­ing com­bat the threat of cli­mate change.

"We need to hear the voic­es of young peo­ple...Their fu­tures are at stake," he said. Ital­ian Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment, Cor­ra­do Cli­ni, added: "By giv­ing a plat­form to youth to tell their sto­ries about cli­mate change, Con­nect4Cli­mate (C4C) is el­e­vat­ing lo­cal voic­es to the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion about cli­mate change."CEO and chair­man of the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty Dr Naoko Ishii mar­velled at the com­mit­ment of young peo­ple to find ways to im­prove their en­vi­ron­ment.

"En­gaged youth can help us change the busi­ness-as-usu­al ap­proach that has led to ris­ing sea lev­els, se­vere drought, melt­ing glac­i­ers and ex­treme weath­er events."The com­pe­ti­tion was or­gan­ised by C4C, a glob­al part­ner­ship launched by the World Bank, the Ital­ian Min­istry of En­vi­ron­ment and the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty in 2011. C4C has a coali­tion of more than 150 part­ners and an on­line com­mu­ni­ty of near­ly half a mil­lion fol­low­ers.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so launched their lat­est com­pe­ti­tion, ichange, for the best orig­i­nal video mes­sage that ad­ddress­es cli­mate change is­sues and ac­tion. Stu­dents from uni­ver­si­ties world­wide are in­vit­ed to at­tend.