Country: Haiti

 Vocation: Medical doctor

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied: Layaille, Haiti

Project Description: These funds will be used to purchase materials for training workshops, products to treat the water and to provide stipend for an assistant to help with the training to prevent the spread of Cholera in the mountains of Layaille. Having this project will benefit the peasants in the community by decreasing the incidence and the prevalence of cholera in the community and that will positively impact the prosperity of the people in the area. They will learn different methods of treating water to be used and they will have products to treat the water. Once they have the training and potable water available to them, they will make better decisions on their water consumption and usage overall.

Personal Bio:  I am Elisson Adrien, a medical doctor in the central plateau of Haiti. I am from a small village called Layaille where I attended primary school. Then I went to the town of Hinche for elementary and high school. After graduating high school, I was awarded a 4-year grant to attend Elon University in North Carolina where I studied Biology. Afterwards, I came back to Haiti and attended Quisqueya University in Port-au-Prince to study Medicine. Two years ago, after graduation, I came back to Layaille working as a clinician. In my free time, I like to swim and play dominoes.

Country: Indonesia

Group Affiliation: UN Mountain Partnership Youth Hub

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied: Highlands surrounding Bandung, Indonesia

Project Description: This project will utilize technology such as cameras to create storytelling/narrative video about the relationship between nature – conservation – and customs, and initiated a support to sale indigenous local rice varieties in producing organic red rice, and help them sell it online (modern technology) using online platforms or applications in Indonesia (from home to market), and it will make the indigenous agriculture products more accessible to the public or residents living in urban areas. This project is undertaken in collaboration with ASEAN, World Trails Network, and Project Sonorous.

Personal Bio: Riza is a Bugis ethnicity. One of the ethnic groups that inhabits the land with the greatest wealth in the world of mineral resources -Nickel. Riza is a journalism graduate with research focusing on cultural identity, and a master’s degree in international relations focusing on cultural diplomacy. By drawing a common thread from those studies, Riza focuses on finding authentic identity and aims to make it as diplomatic tool and shape foreign policy that benefits marginalized communities, especially mountain communities. Riza is part of UN Mountain Matters and has been part of UN Policy Advocacy in Bangkok, Nairobi, and Geneva.

Country: USA/Peru

Group Affiliation: University of Florida

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied: Quechua communities in the Apurimac region of Peru

Project Description: This project aims to create and print Quechua language booklets on best practices for community-based fire management that include safe burning techniques and communal firefighting. For graphic design and illustration, we will hire a Peruvian professional who will design the booklet in coordination with me. These booklets will be disseminated in training workshops held by and for the community. One of the certified firefighters and trained workshop facilitators, Ashley Cuellar, will coordinate all the field activities. This work will be done in close collaboration with a local nonprofit organization, CEDES-Apurimac. Materials and workshops will be held in up to six Quechua communities.

Personal Bio: Vanessa is a Peruvian interdisciplinary ecologist working on Indigenous fire management in the Peruvian Andes. She is passionate about community-based management of natural resources and transformative and just environmental governance.

Group Affiliation: Dr Akbar Niazi Teaching Hospital

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied: Communities surrounding Gilgit

Project Description: Step-by-step guidance will be provided to youth in Gilgit about using the internet to develop basic skills such as graphic designing, video editing, content writing, and basic programming. Free access to the respective courses from Coursera and Udemy will be provided. Moreover, the youth will be trained to use these skills on different platforms to empower themselves. The second aspect of this portal will be to spread awareness about the importance of mountain sustainability. This will be done by making videos and writing blogs on the portal. The content will be gathered by interviewing the senior citizens of the region and using it to motivate new generations to adopt sustainable practices.

Personal Bio: I am a software engineer by profession. I aim to solve real-life problems using technology and make everyday tasks easier for mankind. Moreover, I belong to a mountain area and I have been an active part of community services. I believe in creating opportunities for my community and other deserving communities so that they will be empowered and equip themselves with modern skills and technology.

Country: Canada

Group Affiliation:University of Alberta + Braiding Knowledges Canada

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI)

Project Description: Develop Flash cards of language, phrases, knowledge of Elder indigenous populations of Nehiyawak communities within Alberta living in the “bear hills” – 50 miles S Edmonton; territory extends into the Rocky Mountains. Accessible online, with 10 on You Tube.

Personal Bio: Dr. Paulina Johnson (she/her) Sîpihkokîsikowiskwêw, Blue Sky Woman, is Nêhiyaw (Four-Spirit or Plains Cree) and a citizen of Samson Cree Nation from Mâskwacis, Alberta. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta and the Co-Research Director for Braiding Knowledges Canada.

Country: Peru

Group Affiliation: ACCA, GEOYACGAQ

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied:Pichirhua River Sub-basin, Peru

Project Description: Train 15 high school students from the Pichirhua River Sub-basin in wetland conservation using ancestral knowledge. Funding would be leveraged from an ongoing conservation project that is already occurring with ACCA (Peruvian national conservation agency) with applicant’s own NGO, GEOYACGAQ.

Formar a 15 estudiantes de secundaria de la subcuenca del río Pichirhua en la conservación de humedales utilizando conocimientos ancestrales. La financiación se obtendría de un proyecto de conservación en curso que ya se está llevando a cabo con la ACCA (agencia nacional de conservación del Perú) y la propia ONG del solicitante, GEOYACGAQ.

Personal Bio: Glendy, an ecotourism engineer with a master’s degree in forest resource conservation, works with Amazonian and Andean indigenous communities to generate opportunities for adaptation to climate change, using a gender and intercultural approach. She is passionate about conservation and the revaluation of our cultural identity.

Glendy, ingeniera en ecoturismo con un master en conservación de recursos forestales, trabajo con comunidades indígenas amazónica y andinas buscando la generacion de oportunidades de adaptación al cambio climático, bajo un enfoque de genero e intercultural, apasionada por la conservación y la revalorización de nuestra identidad cultural.

Country: Nepal

Group Affiliation: ICIMOD

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied:Schools in the upper Arun valley and upper Bhote Koshi valley, Nepal

Project Description: Rongkun Liu’s project will support workshops, training sessions, and the development of educational materials that integrate the social-cultural attributes of local mountain communities. This program will educate 10-12 community members designated as community-based DRR personnel, forming a cross-border people-to-people warning system utilizing mobile phones and the visa-free movement zone within 30 kilometers of the border in the two river basins. The target location of this project is in the Schools in the upper Arun valley and upper Bhote Koshi valley in the Nepal/China borderlands.

Personal Bio: Rongkun Liu currently works as Analyst Indus Koshi China Focal Point at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) based in Kathmandu, Nepal. At ICIMOD, he conducts transdisciplinary research on community resilience, climate- and water-induced hazard risk reduction, and integrated river basin management within the transboundary Himalayan landscape. Previously, Rongkun was a Program Manager at the Pendeba Society of the Tibet Autonomous Region, where he was in charge of projects that promoted environmental conservation and community development in the Mount Everest region. He also worked with the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Austria, the Mekong Institute in Thailand, Yunnan Provincial Environmental Protection Department in China, and the Asia Society and World Resources Institute in the US. Rongkun holds a PhD in environmental social sciences from The Ohio State University, a master’s in global environmental policy from American University in Washington D.C., and a bachelor’s in diplomacy from Peking University in China.

Country: India/USA

Group Affiliation: Penn State University

Area where the fellow’s project will be applied: Lepchas, Bhutias, Limbus, and Nepali communities who have a close relationship with sacred natural sites that they have been conserving for generations

Project Description: I would use the funding for community engagement in the study sites listed above. I plan to do this by hiring local field assistants for data collection from across the study sites in the region and aspire to organise outreach programmes via one field school and one workshop on sacred groves, biocultural conservation, and water security with and for the local communities. Field school would specifically entail working with school children in one of the study sites in Sikkim, and the workshop would include the local communities in one of the study sites in Darjeeling.

Personal Bio: Abriti Moktan is a second year PhD Student in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management and a part of the WEF nexus cohort at Penn State University. She works with Dr. Christopher Scott. Her research interest lies within the wide spectrum of Human Ecology and is particularly focused on working in the Eastern Himalayas’ complex social-ecological systems by studying the sacred groves, water security, and adaptive capacities of the local communities in this region.