Two sisters, Amy and Ella, are fighting for positive change, through the leadership of climate action to find a solution to the plastic problem. Their final goal is to reach out to governments around the world, through the voice of young people. It’s inspiring!
Amy and Ella were inspired by the relaunching of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and wanted to do their bit. They chose 3 Goals: Life Below Water, Climate Action and Responsible Consumption. When researching the three goals they saw plastic pollution as a common thread and began their on-the-ground activism. In 2016, Kids Against Plastic was born and is still ongoing today.
As they have developed KAP, they have become increasingly motivated to empower other young people to find their ‘voices’ and believe they too can become activists for positive change. Amy’s Youth Empowerment Scheme and Ella’s KAP Club share resources to young people in the hope that they will find them engaging and empowering through its Plastic Clever initiative. The charity’s goal is to encourage a better perception of single-use plastic as well as empowerment of young people taking action for what they believe in. They also work with businesses, individuals, schools and cafes to deplete their use of the Big 4 and swap in reusable items and encourage crowd/social science through their litter logging app.
Amy and Ella saw how plastic pollution impact oceans and waterways not only in places far from their home but also in their local town of Gelding Borrow. The girls were inspired by the relaunching of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and wanted to do their bit. They chose 3 Goals: Life Below Water, Climate Action and Responsible Consumption to find solutions to the plastic problem.
Through the years, KAP was able to make a certain difference:
– More than 100,000 pieces of plastic litter picked up every year: one for every mammal killed in the ocean because of plastic.
– Over 900 schools and over 50 cafes and businesses signed up to the Plastic Clever scheme, as well as their local council, Gedling Borough Council.
– Over 50 young people are members of the KAP team, supported and motivated to take action in their local area against plastic pollution.
– Kids Against Plastic picked up over 79,000 pieces of plastic litter (as of August 2020)
– Amy and Ella have spoken at events around the world to spread awareness of plastic pollution, including the Young Activists Summit at the UN Geneva, TEDx Exeter, the Welsh, Scottish and English parliaments, as well as countless conferences, schools and festivals.
– Over 28,000 pieces of litter logged on their litter collection app, generating data on litter patterns around the world through citizen/social science.
– More than 100,000 pieces of plastic litter picked up every year: one for every mammal killed in the ocean because of plastic.
– Over 900 schools and over 50 cafes and businesses signed up to the Plastic Clever scheme, as well as their local council Gedling Borough Council.
– Over 50 young people are members of the KAP team, supported and motivated to take action in their local area against plastic pollution.
– Kids Against Plastic picked up over 79,000 pieces of plastic litter (as of August 2020)
– Amy and Ella have spoken at events around the world to spread awareness of plastic pollution, including the Young Activists Summit at the UN Geneva, TEDx Exeter, the Welsh, Scottish and English parliaments, as well as countless conferences, schools and festivals.
– Over 28,000 pieces of litter logged on their litter collection app, generating data on litter patterns around the world through citizen/social science.
One of the largest challenges faced by the charity was dividing time between school/work as it is family-run. With both Amy and Ella in full-time education and their parents working as teachers, this meant it was hard to give enough time to the project and develop the initiative. Initially, during the founding of Kids Against Plastic, the family was traveling around the UK and Europe, homeschooling Amy and Ella. Since returning back to ‘normal’ life, however, time management has been a restriction on the work achieved through Kids Against Plastic.
Tim Meek (father of Amy and Ella, and chair of the charity trustees) now works part-time as a teacher and dedicates the remaining days to work on Kids Against Plastic. Amy and Ella also work with full commitment to the charity outside of school.
In order to save biodiversity, Djibone Sissoko mobilises young people to stop bushfires from spreading in Mali and educates inhabitants from his commune Kita-Ouest about the dangers these fires pose for animals and for the environment. He acts to raise awareness among small farmers and their families about the harmful effects that bushfires can have if poorly managed, devastating fauna and flora in their path.
Friends Sam Teicher and Gator Halpern have co-founded Coral Vita, a high-tech coral farming solution to protect the dying reefs in The Bahamas and around the world. Through high-impact coral reefs restoration, Coral Vita helps preserve reefs for future generations while spurring the blue economy’s growth locally and globally.
Coral Vita’s land-based farms integrate breakthrough methods to accelerate coral growth up to 50x (micro fragmenting) while enhancing their resiliency to warming and acidifying oceans (assisted evolution). Coral Vita’s model scales: one land-based farm can potentially supply an entire nation’s reefs with sufficient capital investment.
Alongside this novel form of high-tech coral farming, Coral Vita is deploying an innovative for-profit model to sustain large-scale restoration. Given reefs’ tremendous value, they are working to transition restoration to a commercial industry. This unique model facilitates revenue generation and better scalability than any current restoration practitioners. Coral Vita sells reef restoration as a service to customers that depend on reefs’ benefits. As the farms grow diverse, resilient, and affordable coral for restoration projects, they also function as eco-tourism attractions and education centres. Guests pay to visit the farms, where they learn about the importance of protecting reefs, and how they can help, including by adopting coral or planting them with Coral Vita’s teams and local dive shops. Students, fishermen, and community members also visit the farm to build local capacity for future jobs in the blue economy, and Coral Vita emphasizes hiring locally as much as possible.
Patrick Kilonzo Mwalua is acting to tackle a fundamental problem: water scarcity in wildlife zones!
The project is all about water for wildlife as one way of conservation and reducing human-wildlife conflict for competing for the same water resource. Indeed, as the number of conflicts between humans and wild animals started to rise due to water scarcity, Patrick decided to bring in an efficient solution through re-watering the dry wildlife zones. Moreover, Patrick is also looking for innovative methodologies to make sure that animals have plenty of water into the wildlife zones.
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