# Alejandro de Jesús García Cuban boy Awarded in Panama in UN Environmental Competition

**Date:** 09/15/2023

At just 11 years old, Cuban boy Alejandro de Jesús García was today the youngest award winner in the regional competition The Planet is a Canvas, sponsored by the United Nations.

Upon receiving the award at the Museum of Liberty and Human Rights in the Panamanian capital, García, who won first place in the audiovisual category, said that the work is merely a sample of his commitment to defending nature.

The young high school student at the Luis Manuel Bisbé educational center in Havana commented earlier to Prensa Latina that his short film titled "The Ozone Layer is Fragile, Protect It" is a message directed at all people in the world to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

Sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), this first edition of the regional competition for Latin America and the Caribbean, dedicated to World Ozone Layer Preservation Day—celebrated every September 16th—was the opportunity to showcase the talent of the young boy who traveled to the isthmus accompanied by his parents, Tania Olivera and Alejando García, both audiovisual producers at the Cuban Institute of the Book.

Since I was young I have been a lover of nature and thanks to reading on these topics and the teaching of my parents I managed to understand the importance of being useful and contributing to the preservation of the ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet rays from the sun and thus prevents harmful effects on human health and the environment.

In his communication product, just over a minute long, García explains with great synthesis and in a didactic manner, supported by illustrations, videos and excellently designed diagrams, how Cuba has fulfilled in an initial stage the agreements of the Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987, and the Kigali Amendment (2016), on the gradual phase-out of the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons.

In words of gratitude, the young basic high school student, visibly moved, cited the aphorism of the National Hero, José Martí, when he said that "the best way to say is to do" to call from another platform to defend nature also through art.

Similarly, García was a winner on the island in three editions of the national competition Protecting the Ozone Layer from Home, "but now I have had the opportunity to bring to other people on the planet how decisive it is to care for that natural shield of Planet Earth," he emphasized.

At the ceremony, the coordinator of the Montreal Protocol for Latin America, Marco Pinzón indicated that this type of competition contributes to celebrating through creativity the contribution of artists committed to defending the planet.

Their contributions are also key in the effort of societies that allow us to assert that in recent years the ozone layer has been recovering and statistics indicate that 99 percent of its ozone-depleting gases have been eliminated.

In that sense, he said addressing the award winners and participants at the event, we are all managers and witnesses to one of the most successful environmental agreements in history.

In the regional competition, among more than 400 works received, first prize winners also received their certificates: Ecuadorian Noelia Vinueza, for her drawing Deep Breath; and Mexicans Danna Torrejón (Digital Illustration) and Rodrigo Rico (Photography).