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When Max Hidalgo was 13 years old, his parents sent him away. Not as a punishment – even though the homesickness was sometimes so intense he could not bear it – but as a gift. Hidalgo was dispatched to school where his parents hoped he’d get a quality education, which was not available in his remote Peruvian village.

31 October is World Cities Day. The theme for 2020 is Valuing Our Communities and Cities.  For the Day, we look back to one of our Young Champions of the Earth from 2017, Latin America and Caribbean winner Liliana Jaramillo.

Since she won the 2019 Young Champion of the Earth prize for Latin America and the Caribbean, Aqualuz Founder Anna Luisa Beserra has been working hard on saving lives.

Gator Halpern is in no doubt at all that climate change is wreaking havoc. The founder of Coral Vita, 2018’s Young Champion of the Earth for Latin America and the Caribbean has been on the frontline of climate disaster.

Twenty-one-year-old Brazilian Anna Luisa Baserra always wanted to be a scientist. From washing liquid to shampoo, no household item escaped the potential for becoming the next scientific experiment.  “I used to play with my cousins, trying to make chemical compounds from any liquids we could find, mixing them up and pretending to be professional scientists,” she recalls.

Twenty-one-year-old Brazilian Anna-Luisa Beserra wins the prestigious Young Champions of the Earth Prize in Latin America and the Caribbean for making a cistern solution for clean water. Seven young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 with big ideas for environmental change have been recognized from across the globe.

The 2019 Young Champion of the Earth for Latin America and the Caribbean, Anna Luisa Santos developed Aqualuz, the only technology in the world for cisterns, which only needs sunlight to make rainwater suitable for consumption. It is a validated technology in the field, with many advantages compared to competitors including clay filter, chlorination and water boiling.

During World Water Week, we spoke with changemaker Maricela Granda, a 25-year-old environmental biotechnology engineer from Ecuador who is developing a way to purify water using banana waste. Granda comes from the Sucumbios province in the northern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon, known for its oil production. Her community is employed mostly by oil companies, as well as in agriculture—and bananas are an important local crop.  

Twenty-eight-year-old Jenifer Colpas is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Tierra Grata. It is a social enterprise that sets out to address the need for basic energy, water and sanitation services in Colombia.

Gator Halpern, Young Champion of the Earth for Latin America and the Caribbean and Co-founder of Coral Vita, has opened the world’s first land-based commercial coral farm for more resilient reef restoration in Grand Bahama.

Gator Halpern, winner of the Young Champion of the Earth award 2018 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and his team at Coral Vita are off to a flying start in 2019.  

Liliana Jaramillo, 2017 Young Champion of the Earth for Latin America and the Caribbean, shares her experiences in greening the rooves of Quito. July 2018 Moving on up... Being an entrepreneur is a challenge, but I do feel that I am getting closer to certain goals; closer to my dream: greening the city with native plants. Working on what you feel passionate about, keeps you doing many different things and time flies.

The United Nations Environment Programme today announces Ecuadorian biologist Liliana Jaramillo Pazmiño as a Young Champion of the Earth for her work in bringing back flora and fauna and reducing air pollution and vulnerability to natural disasters by encouraging more use of native plants in the green rooftops of our urbanized planet.