Every Day Earth Day : MoveHer and YFEED
MOVEHer is a youth-and-women-led movement in partnership with the green transport and logistics industries in Asia Pacific. Indeed, in areas where either urban crimes and protracted conflict, or natural disasters pervade, public transport offers solutions to ensure that day-to-say services and humanitarian action are met on time. Needless to say, the nexus of age, gender, culture, as they relate to varied urban solutions to the climate crisis, might just be in the local hands of the transport and logistics sectors.
Last Earth Day, in celebration of zero-carbon solutions across all sectors, MoveHER in cooperation with Carawahe Playhouse and UP Town Center, offered electric and solar-powered tricycles as alternative means of mobility for urban dwellers around Quezon City. Roaming the highways, they offered seedlings for urban gardens, with an online show “Journey to the Heart” in replay - a new environment-focused, mindfulness and wellness workshop for children and children at heart. The presence of “e-trikes,” or chargeable three-wheeled vehicles in the Philippines is a welcome innovation in the sector, as more and more local governments are investing in such green solutions.
Rapid urbanisation has left cities struggling to meet the demands for safe and inclusive mobility services and infrastructure , which translates to access to basic services such as food security, employment, education, healthcare, leisure, among others. For the next generation of urban dwellers, young people are the ones who will inherit and shape the habitats of the future. In addition, while the majority of indigenous peoples worldwide still live in rural areas, they are increasingly migrating to urban areas, both voluntarily and involuntarily. Mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic have even significantly added to the challenges for female and indigenous youth, and their goods, and require significant creativity and innovation from stakeholders to turn loss into opportunity.
MOVEHer, in cooperation with YFEED Foundation, has been in communication with NRS Relief in UAE, a purpose-driven company that supplies fit-for-purpose, innovative, high quality and cost-effective refugee shelters, core relief items such as tarpaulins, multipurpose tents, mobile storage units and solar products. A research paper is penned to identify best practices on urban mobility, to shed light on the New Urban Agenda and Compact for Young People in Humanitarian Action. If urban mobility systems respond to the signs of the times, and are catered towards more inclusive multimodal and intermodal travel for young women and indigenous people, and goods, everyone could ‘extend their range’ to access jobs, services and other social contacts.
