APNEK, a MIO-ECSDE member organization from Tunisia, and its group of young APNEK Leaders, teamed up with the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences (FLSHK) of the University of Kairouan and organized back-to-back events during the second week of May 2023.

On 13 May, 2023, and in the context of the implementation of its communal waste management project in Kairouan, supported by the US Forest/IP in Washington and in partnership with FLSHK and the Tunisian Association of Climatology, APNEK organized a study and awareness day on climate change and its physical and geopolitical impact targeting the faculty’s students and the members of the APNEK Leaders youth group, who have been coached and supported by the APNEK parent association for three successive years. The FLSHK’s Dean closed the day by emphasizing the cultural dimension, which must not be overlooked since it is first and foremost a question of changing and improving people’s behavior towards their natural environment in order to achieve the desired adaptation and mitigation objectives.

On 14 May, 2023, as part of the Mediterranean campaign “Clean Up the Med * and of the implementation of the communal waste management project in Kairouan, APNEK organized a clean-up campaign in the Rajiche beach in the Mahdia Governorate, which is very popular with Kairouan summer visitors. A public awareness campaign in the center of the town kicked off the event by mobilizing the local residents in the streets and cafés. The clean-up itself gathered more than 30 participants, covered around 400 meters of the Rajiche beach, and collected more than 900 kilos of various types of garbage (plastic, stone, glass, fabric, plant and metal debris).

* Clean Up the Med campaign is one the largest environmental initiatives organized yearly by Legambiente, also one of MIO-ECSDE member organizations, to raise awareness among citizens from all the Mediterranean countries on the problem of marine litter and on collective reduction actions. In the Clean Up the Med 2023 edition, which called for mobilization on 12-14 May, more than 80 organizations from 16 countries joined the initiative: Italy, Algeria, Albania, Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Croatia, Malta, Turkey, Libya, Greece, Israel, Spain, Portugal, Palestinian Authority and Jordan.

Read in French here