Launching the second volume of the ADN Junior Champion Magazine
Time
10:00 a.m. (GMT)
About
Avoidable Deaths Network (ADN) is releasing the 'ADN Junior Champion Magazine Volume 2 on 11 October 2024 to mark the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction's (UNDRR) 'International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction' (IDDRR).
The ADN Junior Champion Magazine was launched under the Future Leader Scheme on 13 October 2023. Junior Champions are citizens of change. They are the future guardians of this planet. ADN strongly believes that by engaging with these future guardians, we can promote and protect the natural world, which is vital for the sustainability of humans and animals.
The ADN Junior Champion Magazine is led by two junior champions, Master Arkoneil Ghosh (Founding Editor) and Miss Prarthona Datta (Deputy Editor), and one future leader, Miss Anushka Koner (Deputy Editor). It features the voices of children and youths who are on the frontline, bearing the brunt of climate change and extreme weather events every day. Each Magazine features a timely theme. Subject-specific experts are invited to guide the editors based on the themes. For this Volume, Dr Ranjan Datta (Canada Research Chair in Community Disaster Research) from Mount Royal University is the subject-specific guest editor.
This year, the IDRR theme is "empowering the next generation for a resilient future". Volume 2 is fitting in this regard. It features eight stories, half of which are from Indigenous youths from small, marginalised communities that are severely affected by disasters due to ongoing colonisation and everyday environmental and social discrimination in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh.
Many of these youths do not have internet access or the opportunity to write because they must work to collect food. To contribute to this Volume, they often had to walk two to three hours or use local transport to access the internet. Despite these challenges, they wrote their essays in mainstream languages. The meanings of their writings were altered during the translation process-first from Indigenous languages to Bangla and then from Bangla to English. As Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers have suggested, while these youths lack the opportunity to express their learning in their languages, this Volume provides a valuable platform to highlight their community's needs through the voices of their youth. This, in turn, creates numerous opportunities to convey community needs and aspirations. Elders assert that non-Indigenous researchers are responsible for centring Indigenous youths' voices as part of fostering Indigenous youth self-determination and empowering the next generation to define their resilience.