Boot camp seeks young ocean heroes

Among the people involved in next moth's Ocean Heroes Network bootcamp are, from left, Marleigh Smith, Dinara Perera, Estefania McDermot, Claire Hughes and Molly de Saram. - Photo: Alvaro Serey

For the first time, conservation group Ocean Heroes Network will host a regional boot camp for the Caribbean, and is calling on young environmentalists and nature lovers between the ages of 11 and 18 to sign up.

The virtual boot camp will take place on 6 Dec. and 11-13 Dec., with the aim to equip Caribbean youth with the resources, skills and contacts to create campaigns to help protect the Caribbean Sea and the world’s oceans.

On its website, Ocean Heroes Network said the regional boot camp had been specifically created and curated for the youth of Caribbean nations “to help create collaboration and solutions to ocean health issues that affect their home communities, but are common across their shared sea”.

Estefania McDermot, 20, one of the local organisers, said her experience with Ocean Heroes Network boot camps in the past has been life-changing for her, and she hopes other young people will embrace the chance to learn about how they can campaign and work for marine conservation.

She attended Ocean Heroes Network’s first boot camp in New Orleans two years ago, where she said her speech caused quite a stir. “I was just saying what I thought from my perspective as a 17 year old,” she said. Her speech brought her together with the Ocean Heroes Network “and since then I’ve been engaged with Ocean Heroes and National Geographic and all sorts of connections”, she said.

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A global boot camp had been planned in Vancouver early this year, but the COVID-19 crisis prevented that from going ahead, so it was held on a virtual platform. There has never been an Ocean Heroes boot camp specifically for the Caribbean, McDermot said, so the group reached out to her and local conservationist groups to ask if they would be interested in organising one for this region.

She has been working since September with local groups Plastic Free Cayman and Protect our Future on the logistics of organising the event.

She said one of the challenges in organising the regional event is ensuring that it “fits the needs of the Caribbean and aligns with the cultural context that is unique to the Caribbean”.

The boot camp, which will teach the young participants how to develop social media and other campaigns and action plans for their ideas, involves three ‘tracks’ – plastic pollution, marine ecosystem conservation, and building ocean connections.

McDermot is behind Plastic Free Cayman’s ‘345 Pledge’, which urges people to combat single-use plastic waste. That campaign came out of her involvement in the 2018 boot camp and reached more than 1 million people, she said. “That is why I am motivated to do this programme. For the people who take part, their lives will change.””

The camp will bring participants together with scientists, NGOs, youth leaders and policy makers who will give advice on putting campaign pitches together, organising budgets and creating project timelines.

McDermot said the main goal is to create unity. “We want to unite the Caribbean youth so they can learn from each other, support each other, share their struggles, create a bond and work together to create change,” she said.

Participation in the boot camp is free and is open to anyone between the ages of 11 and 18 who live in the Caribbean and have an internet connection. To sign up, visit https://oceanheroeshq.com before 2 Dec.