Our Youth Center is the home for our organization, and our interns are the beating heart. They bring life to our Youth Center and maintain our home and help our community grow.
In 2019, Jo-Jikum was approved by the RMI National Training Council to begin an internship program with our organization. As recently as January 2021, we have also been approved by the College of the Marshall Islands for internship programs.
Our internship program aims to equip our youth with common workplace skill sets. They also learn community organizing skills, public speaking, and an increased awareness of climate change, environmental issues such as nuclear testing, pollution, and plastic waste. They attend local as well as international meetings representing youth and RMI perspectives, design and deliver workshops, and maintain our Youth Center’s community garden.
A look at a few of the program our interns have helped coordinate, implement, and participated in in 2020:
- Einwot Juon Campaign – a campaign to promote the use of reusable utensils and bags. They attended strategizing meetings, designed and collected surveys, created Tik Tok videos for promotion, tabled outside of the major grocery stores on island, and helped design infographs and participated in cleanups.
- Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day – for this national holiday, interns helped plan and participated in painting and poetry workshops on the topic of nuclear justice, and coordinated and performed at the Nuclear Open Mic Night
- Matagi Malohi Week- In the build-up to the Global Climate Strikes, during 350 Pacific Climate Warriors’ 2020 Matagi Mãlohi week of climate action, Jo-Jikum interns and College of the Marshall Islands Jo-Jikum Club joined 31 online and offline events across the region that called for a Just Recovery. Our interns and students here in the Marshalls decided that a Just Recovery is cleaning our environment and taking care of our ocean in order to secure a clean and green future for our islands. To promote this, they planned a cleanup and barbeque picnic at Kalalen atoll.
- Climate and Health Arts Seminar – interns underwent leadership training and helped coordinate the complicated logistics of the Arts Seminar, as well as acting as “Camp counselors” to the 39 high school participants. They supported the artist instructors with the arts workshops, as well as designing and leading the morning icebreakers and team building exercises. They also helped develop the products of the camp – assisting with recording the high school students’ songs and designing a booklet that included the poetry, songs, and photos of the weaving and paintings from the participants.
- Black Lives Matter Art Workshop and Photo Demonstration – Inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, our interns organized their friends and community members for a BLM art workshop where they painted canvas’ and prints to show support for the movement. They then invited out supporters for a photo demonstration displaying the art work.
- Wellness Community Gardening Project – in partnership with the Wellness Center here in the Marshall Islands, interns helped coordinate weekly community gardening classes that began in June 2020 have been ongoing into this year (2021) and took place in the Hiromi Garden right outside of the Jo-Jikum Youth Center. They also participated in cooking classes to learn how to incorporate the fruit of their labor into a healthier lifestyle. Interns also learned how these basic skillsets feed into mitigation and food security efforts at small scale.
- Climate Change Directorate – in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, our Director and Climate Envoy Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner has been exploring ways to incorporate youth into the policy and planning process for climate change adaptation. From September – December, this was explored through workshops on the differences and similarities between mitigation and adaptation, and how government structures implement the national level projects tackling these issues.
