Youth Speaker entry #21: Jose Carlos Martinez (Mexico)

Reforestamos México is an NGO that works to ensure the forests Mexico needs for its development. We believe that people can live honorably and in abundance through the natural resources found in forests, which is why we develop strategies that allow people living in forest communities to create sustainable, responsible and competitive enterprises.

Our job seeks to help people become forest entrepreneurs, as opposed to other programs and projects that, through their subsidiary efforts, they hinder people’s autonomous development by imposing ideas and perceptions. Our efforts focus on making all sectors of society participate considering this new perception of our forests.

Generating new and professional talent is vital to the future of our forests; we need young, responsible people with long-term vision and a committed responsibility towards forests and other people. Among the strategies we have to tackle this issue is the project Young Forest Entrepreneur. This project seeks to generate an entrepreneurship culture among Forest Engineering students in Mexico and complement their technical formation with social and economic education in order to recognize talent and build successful enterprises to ensure our forests.

Today, 17 institutions in forest education have become part of the project. More than 1100 young individuals have participated, developing 38 forestry productive projects. We built a virtual platform to connect with more people and close the digital gap in forest institutions – many forest students don’t use the new technologies as easily as students studying in cities.

We have generated alliances with important academic institutions, as are Tecnológico de Monterrey and the National Forest Commission (CONAFOR), the main body behind the forest agenda in Mexico.

Finally, we are aware of the importance of bringing projects of young individuals to the attention of a much wider audience, which is why we work on spreading and communicating the work we do along with other stakeholders, as well as the progress and successes of community enterprises built by forest entrepreneurs. We have come a long way and we are going much further.

To read more about these and other initiatives, visit the Reforestamos Mexico website.

Jose Carlos is a counselor in a couple organizations that are led by young people, he is also an advisor of entrepreneurial initiatives. He is creating a rural enterprise and gives workshops on environmental topics for young people.

Text, photo and video are submitted by Jose Carlos Martinez (Mexico) – jose(at)reforestamosmexico.org

The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.

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This post is published as an application by the author, to speak as a youth representative at the World Forestry Congress. Have a look at the other entries too!

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