Group photo with winners
The European Union (EU) has Tuesday rewarded winners who took part in a climate change trivia that run on the Delegation’s social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter.
The campaign than ran for eight days, detailed a total of 24 trivia questions, with four published daily, concluded successfully on December 13th 2022.
Nadia Cannata, the Head of Sustainable Development at the EU presided over the handover ceremony and noted that the online quiz was a creative avenue to sensitize young people in Uganda on the ways to combat the effects of climate change in the country and around the world.
“Climate change has been referred to as the greatest threat facing the planet today and we as #TeamEurope thought it important that the youth lead the way in taking action to counter its adverse effects. The quiz is one of the sensitization efforts that we took to create more awareness on the subject and situation,” she said.
Key areas that the EU Delegation is focusing on in terms of climate action, are “Green and Climate Transition”, Ms Cannata said, as well as “Access to Green Finance”, which are part of the “European Green Deal”—a package of policy initiatives which aims at setting the EU and its partners to a green transition. The ultimate goal of this package, which includes interventions supporting the private sector in Uganda to go green, she said, is to reach climate neutrality by 2025.
Ms Cannata noted that the EU Delegation had approved at least 60 million Euros (about Ugx 232 billion) in financing in 2022 to support the inclusive green economy in Uganda.
“We have so far approved 40 million for forestry and 15 million for climate finance and 5 million for bio-diversity support,” she said.
Emmanuel Gyezaho, the EU Press and Communications Advisor noted that the online quiz took a format of multiple-choice questions and rewarded daily winners who posted correct that gathered the most engagement on their social networks. Each day’s winner received a gift pack comprising a flash disk, power bank, umbrella, and hoodie.
Sarah Mazirwe on Twitter, was declared the overall winner of the competition and took home a brand-new Samsung Galaxy S22 on top of the other gift prizes. She registed a total of 2,354 total engagements—which included likes, retweets, shares, comments e.t.c)
Mr Gyezaho said the quiz presented an excellent opportunity for a change in the way social media users have over time been responding to posts from the EU.
“For all the posts we publish, there are always social media users that tend to flood our pages with vitriol with political connotations. This campaign was a breath of fresh air and showed that young people in Uganda are concerned about climate change and are happy to participate in initiatives that create awareness and share knowledge,” Gyezaho said.
He explained the rationale of involving young people in climate change campaigns as the fact that it threatens lives and livelihoods of many, particularly future generations.
