The Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN), in collaboration with UNCCD organized a panel discussion that took place on 29 May The event aimed to bring together youth from across the entire Caribbean and panelists from five different islands in the region to discuss the topic “COVID-19, Land and the Future”. The main objective was to raise awareness among Caribbean on the importance of sustainable land use for the future of the region and to inspire their youth action regarding the same.

The CYEN is a non-profit, non-governmental network organization dedicated to improving the quality of life of Caribbean young people by facilitating their personal development and involvement in environment protection and sustainable development: https://cyen.org/

The webinar was attended by more than 575 participants from the Caribbean and beyond. As part of the promotion of the event. To promote the event, more than 30,000 people in the Caribbean were reached through multimedia content distributed UNCCD and CYEN social media platforms, complimented by an interview with ABS TV.

The workshop organizers, who aimed at delivering concrete results  results, achieved the following:

• Designed a special internship programme geared at supporting institutional capacity building in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS). This programme aims at enabling young professionals to make a greater contribution to the implementation of the UNCCD in their countries: see details here
• Similar workshop to be delivered for for the SIDS of the Pacific in 2022
• Seedlings for St Vincent and the Grenadines: as part of this project, the UNCCD and CYEN will provide seeds to replant forest destroyed by the volcanic eruption 

The CYEN and UNCCD also agreed to continue their cooperation in capacity building for the Caribbean youth working on land restoration and other environmental issues.