ID :
367406
Fri, 05/15/2015 - 12:12
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Youth Can Be Guardians Of Environment - Netherlands Academician

By Fadzli Ramli MELAKA (Malaysia), May 15 (Bernama) -- Guardians of the environment. That is the mantle youth can take on when a sense of ownership is instilled in them. Such ownership of the environment will ensure the current generation appreciates and protects the environment with a passion, notes a Netherlands academician. Dr Jun Hu, associate professor in design research on social computing at the department of industrial design, Eindhoven University of Technology, said in this era, youth would take care of things better when they owned them. For example, he said, when youth owned high-end smartphones, they would take care of the device like their life depended on it. However, it is a different story when it involved public property. "Youth these days (are such that) we cannot just hammer in an idea into their brain and expect them to follow it 100 per cent. "So, we must try different tactics so that the youth understand the importance of protecting the environment. "We must generate a sense of ownership in the youth. For example, giving a part of the city to the youth to take care of, make it like they own that place and give rewards if they can take care of it well," he said. Hu was speaking to Bernama on the sideline of the 15th Melaka Twin Cities Convention held here recently where he presented a paper entitled, 'Innovative Opportunities in Future Green Cities'. He said creating a sense of ownership in protecting the environment could also be made by making it a fashionable and trendy thing for the youth. "Youth love to do fashionable and trendy things, so why not make protecting the environment fashionable and trendy for them, from as small as wearing green shirt that have environmental message to volunteering with your nearest green project. "The bottom line is, we must make youth understand but we must know how to make them understand because youth now learn in a different way, learn better with the Internet and YouTube, as compared with the previous generation which learnt better with books," noted Hu. --BERNAMA

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