Workshops on the environment and youth in CAR

01/08/2022

A number of activities will be taking place during the month of August, as part of the ‘Laboratoire de dialogue centrafricain’ project. These will involve working with civil society organisations and running workshops to establish open dialogue and discussion about the environment and youth. Our Central African partners, ‘Peace & Development Watch’, have provided precious help in organising these events, finding locations, identifying participants and communicating with communities. Two Groupe URD researchers are currently facilitating the workshops which will be taking place over the week in a number of neighbourhoods in Bangui.

The ‘Laboratoire de dialogue centrafricain’ project has two objectives:

Creating a documentary base (research projects, theses and scientific documents that could disappear) in order to make knowledge available, which is essential to reflection and dialogue within society;
Organising events to allow social dialogue on 4 issues: youth and employment, the environment, transhumance and health. The aim is thereby to increase trust between political decision makers, intellectuals, academics, practitioners and civil society actors.

The current mission is focused on certain topics related to project component 2.

Staff from Groupe URD and Peace & Development Watch (PDW) are organising a series of workshops in different neighbourhoods in Bangui with citizens and civil society actors on two topics :

Youth and employment: several workshops will be run on different issues, such as 1/ combatting stereotypes and discrimination at work in relation to recruitment (gender, disability, social background, etc.), 2/ facilitating access to resources (training and funds) and the sharing of experiences, 3/ supporting and promoting employment in the culture sector. These were selected following discussions with citizens and actors during previous visits and confirmed with our partners PDW.
The environment: the discussions will focus on two major issues, 1/ application of the May 2020 law on plastic, and 2/ the reuse of organic waste, particularly via composting and sorting waste at the source.

This mission will also be an opportunity to pursue the mapping of civil society actors, notably those involved in activities related to youth and the environment, both in Bangui and, as far as possible, in the provinces. It will allow us to identify actors who can take part in current and future activities.

Following these workshops, we will produce different support materials, including briefing notes, reports and radio programmes. These will help to share the content and recommendations of the workshops with the participants, and, more broadly, with the actors involved in the project. The next mission will focus on project component 1, which is the constitution of the documentary base.