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A creative animation dubbed “What is Principle 10?” by Ted Sandiford of Saint Lucia copped first place in a regional video/animation competition called “Our Environment, Our Voices”. While, Luis Vera of Mexico came second with a video called “We saved the cocospera river”. The winners of the contest were announced on Monday, March 20th in Brazil at the 6th Meeting of the Negotiating Committee of the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
Ted Sandiford creator of “What is Principle 10?” Animation
In October 2016, the contest was launched by the Regional Environmental Center (REC) under the project ‘Building bridges between regions – Interregional cooperation on the implementation of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration and Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Caribbean region’. REC in collaboration with the Elected Representatives of the Public for Principle 10 issued a call for people of the LAC region to use their creativity to depict in a 3 minute video or animation the importance of access rights regarding environmental matters in the region. Special thanks to the Ministry of the Environment, Land and Sea of Italy for providing the prizes: 1st place – US$800 voucher and 2nd place – US$400 voucher from an electronic store.
Ted Sandiford, the first place winner was ecstatic about the news and said, “I am very elated knowing that I won this competition. The competition was stiff and the other submissions were all of excellent quality. I chose to use an animated video because this is what I specialize in. I have noticed that using animation grasps adults as well as the youth. The message brought about in this video (and the other submissions) is to make others aware that they have a say in what happens with their environment. Education brings change and we need to be educated about our environment because it belongs to US.”
Luis Vera creator of “We saved the cocospera river”
Luis Vera of Mexico said, “I was very surprised after being notified I was the second place winner. I did not expect it after watching the great work of the other participants. I filmed this video using a drone because we thought it would be necessary to show the full picture of this beautiful landscape in Northwestern, Mexico. After I posted the video, many civil society organizations helped me to share the material on social media, via email and on the local news. It is necessary that we share more stories like this one, so we can protect our environment.”
A total of 5 entries were received from Saint Lucia, Mexico, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. All entries can be seen at https://www.facebook.com/ourenvironmentourvoices/.
The organizers thank the judges who assisted in evaluating the entries, they were: Danielle Andrade-Goffe: Attorney-at-law and Elected Representative of the Public (Jamaica); Carole Excell: Acting Director of the Environmental Democracy Practice, World Resources Institute; Henrique Góes and Barbara Paes of the Access to Information Team, Article 19 and Zsolt Bauer: Head of Communications and PR of the Regional Environment Center.
