The United Nations International Childrens’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is accepting expressions of interest for the Air Quality programme.
Children and young people are more sensitive to the negative effects of climate change and environmental pollution as well as more vulnerable to severe environmental circumstances than adults. Children’s and young people’s present-day skills, knowledge, and attitudes will serve as the cornerstone of future community sustainability and collective resilience to climate change.
The staggeringly high levels of air pollution in the Western Balkans have a terrible impact on people’s health and mortality. People in cities in the Western Balkans breathe air with concentrations of pollutants up to five times higher than thresholds stated in national, European, and WHO air quality guidance standards, making air pollution the single largest environmental danger to human health in the area. In North Macedonia especially, air pollution is associated with every fourth hospitalisation for respiratory issues and every fifth premature death, and about 1,350 deaths are attributed to particle air pollution each year. Annually, days of limited activity and hospital admissions because of chronic bronchitis and asthma cost several thousand work years.
UNICEF is now carrying out a programme in the field of environment and climate change that is sponsored by Sida, the Swedish government agency for development cooperation. The programmes involve integrating all aspects of environmental education and education about climate change, developing new “green” skills, assisting youth-led networks already involved in environmental and air quality advocacy, enhancing the influence of young people on environmental and air quality decision-making, and providing a forum for their interaction with local and national governments.
Eligibility Criteria
- CSO must:
- be registered in North Macedonia.
- not be an entity named on any of the UN Security Council targeted sanction lists.
Click here to Apply.
For more information, visit UNICEF.
Deadline: 12-Sep-23
