A Toolkit on Youth and Young Professionals in Science, Engineering, Technology, and Innovation for Disaster Risk Reduction

UNESCO has been advocating youth, young scientists, and young professionals in Asia and the Pacific to strengthen as well as to use their capacities, capabilities, and initiatives in Science, Engineering, Technology, and Innovation (SETI) to support Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change (CC), and build resilience in achieving the targets of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) at national, regional, and global levels.

In partnership with U-INSPIRE Alliance, UNESCO Office Jakarta published an information guide on how to form a youth and young professional’s platform working in DRR using SETI. This toolkit was developed by consolidating good practices, lessons learnt, success factors, and challenges on the establishment and journeys of 11 National Platforms and 1 Regional Platform. The toolkit described how this national platforms, knows as U-INSPIRE, working together nationally and regionally to voice and address issues on DRR and CC based on SETI. The toolkit also documented innovative local actions where youth and young professionals have successfully used their SETI to support disaster risk reduction activities in their countries including responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The objective of this toolkit is to inspire other youth and young professionals in the region to also contribute their knowledge, capacities, and capabilities in SETI to build resilience towards disaster and climate change through practical and policy initiatives at the local, national or regional levels. To encourage and motivate young people to work collaboratively under similar platform to create opportunities for transdisciplinary interaction and communication among the young people to close the gap between hard and soft sciences to find solutions for disaster risk reduction and climate change.