Green Hope UAE conducted a youth workshop  for high school students to build outreach on various aspects of sustainability . The objective was to build a culture of disaster resilience amongst the youth, who, quite often, are at the greatest risk. We also wanted to show our solidarity with the migration of the MDGs into the SDGs and the development of the post2015 agenda in our region.

On disaster risk resilience , particularly with regard to the environment, our message was simple – ?There is no such thing as a 'natural' disaster, only natural hazards.? DRR aims to reduce the damage caused by natural hazards like earthquakes, floods, droughts and cyclones, through an ethic of prevention. A disaster's severity depends on how much impact a hazard has on society and the environment. The scale of the impact in turn depends on the choices we make for our lives and for our environment. These choices relate to how we grow our food, where and how we build our homes, what kind of government we have, how our financial system works and even what we teach in schools. Each decision and action makes us more vulnerable to disasters - or more resilient to them.

Reducing food wastage and building reserves need to be part of the planning towards disaster risk preparations   we, thus, emphasized on UNEP's Think.Eat.Save campaign . Through these workshops, our core group trains young people to make presentations and this enables them to take forward our various outreach activities. An internationally renowned expert from Bolivia also contributed remotely to the event with a  presentation on the gender impacts of DRR which were shared with the participants .

The workshop also focused on capacity building on sustainable consumption, the transition from the MDGs to the sustainable development goals with the objective of involving the youth of our region in the post 2015 agenda. Green Hope UAE believes that young people must be involved and engaged in all aspects of SDGs and we will continue to hold many such workshops in the coming months.