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Jerome Foster II is an American climate change activist, voting rights advocate, and virtual reality developer. Foster is the executive director of OneMillionOfUs; an international youth voting and advocacy organization.
He founded an international online publication, the Climate Reporter, with young journalists from eight countries. He also serves as the D.C. youth organizer for Global Climate Strike, the environmental activist organization.
He is 18 years old

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Jerome uses self advocacy skills to speak up on social media about the recent farmers protests that are occurring in India
https://twitter.com/JeromeFosterII?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Jerome has also used his platform as a youth advocate in create a platform for young voters with the recent election in the United States. Jerome has a strong stance on ensuring that Climate Justice is a priority among voters.

Foster is leading a climate strike outside of the White House in solidarity with the second global “Fridays For Future” strike planned across all seven continents. Students are expected to strike in 1,623 places in 119 countries. Modeled after Greta.

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Autumn Peltier is an Anishinaabe Indigenous water-rights activist from Wikwemikong First Nation/Manitoulin Island. She advocates for access to clean drinking water in First Nations communities in Canada and around the world.

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Autumn uses self advocacy skills to speak up for her community on a national and international level.
Identity: Autumn has a very strong sense of identity. She is proud of her heritage and you can hear that in the way that she speaks and how she is advocating for better living conditions for her people.
Belonging: Autumn's deep sense of belonging is evident when she didn’t do what she was told and spoke directly to the prime minister about the water crisis facing many Indigenous communities in Canada.
Meaning: Autumn has been called to be a voice and has found meaning in her life by fighting for these rights for people to have access to clean water and to keep Canada's natural spaces clean and thriving.

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What did the person do?

What did they advocate for?

What skills do you see them use to advocate?

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She is an Environmental Activist who co-founded the US Youth Climate Strike.

she is daughter of Ilhan Omar
US congresswoman

Has won several awards for her youth climate change work including voice of the future award

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- community organizing -organized hundreds of school climate strikes

- Not afraid to articulate her beliefs in a bold way

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- Leader of the Fridays for Future Movement in Argentina
- 19 years old
- a political science student at the University of Buenos Aires
- Promotes climate awareness and encourages government change, not just that they listen.
- “Our world leaders have the obligation to make radical change"

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Political Science Student from University of Buenos Aires.
Organizer of Rallies and Protests

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Helena Gualinga is a human rights activist from Kichwa Sarayaku, a community in Pastaza, Ecuador. Her activism focuses on climate change and defending her Latin America home from the threat of the government and businesses accessing the land for corporate gain.

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Indigenous environmental and human rights activist.
Started the "Polluters Out" movement
Gualinga participated in the COP25 in Madrid , Spain. She spoke about her concern on the Ecuadorian government authorizing oil extraction in indigenous land.

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Mari is a 13 year old from Flint, Michigan known globally as Little Miss Flint. Born on July 6th, 2007 (same birthday as Vince).  She first rose to the public spotlight when her letter to President Obama about the water crisis prompted him to visit the city and survey the water crisis for himself. That visit ultimately led to him approving $100 million dollars in relief for the city of Flint.

"activist, philanthropist, future president"

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Uses self advocacy skills to speak up for her community on a national level. She is a supporter in water rights, women's rights and bullying awareness initiatives.

Advocates in Flint Michigan for their water crisis.

Wrote a letter to Obama.

raised over 500000$ for Flint Kids projects.

featured in teen vogue

produced her very own reusable water bottle that filters out toxic water.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/28/world/youth-environment-activists-greta-thunberg-trnd/index.html

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Gualinga’s early activism has earned her comparisons with the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is of the same age.

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Friday marks the last day of the 25th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP25.

World leaders gathered in Madrid to negotiate carbon emissions and the Paris Agreement. Last year, a U.N. International Panel on Climate Change report warned the global community it only has 12 years to avoid the threat of more severe floods, droughts, extreme heat and poverty.

But instead of collaborating to find solutions, COP25 has been defined by protests and frustration.

On Wednesday, Greta Thunberg, Time's "Person of the Year," criticized governments for lacking urgency. The 16-year-old activist also put a spotlight on indigenous communities' fight against climate change.

"Their rights are being violated across the world and they are also among the ones being hit the most and the quickest by the climate and environmental emergency," she said.

Thunberg called for the environmental movement to include more voices like 17-year-old indigenous activist Helena Gualinga, who grew up in a small community in the Ecuadorian Amazon called Sarayaku.

Gualinga says indigenous children are some of the most important activists because by living in native communities, they are protecting the forests in the Amazon.

"What got me into environmental activism was just living and growing up in the community," she says. "I think that is activism. That's a sign of resistance."

Oil companies have posed a threat to Gualinga's community for as long as she can remember, she says. These companies often do not consult indigenous communities before entering their territories, she says.

That's what happened to Sarayaku - her home. The Ecuadorian government supported oil companies and together, they entered the indigenous territory along with military, she says.

To protect their forests, she says the community had to stand up against these powers. As the first line of defense, men used to run into the forest to protect the community from the military, she says.

"It's about my home. It's about my people. It's about my family," she says. "We have this really close relationship to nature. And we live by nature and we live with nature. And that's something that is very important to us."

The fight to protect the forests later turned to a legal battle in courtrooms. Gualinga's community won a court case against the Ecuadorian government in 2012 and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica.

Despite these victories, another oil company has since conceded on her community's land, she says. She predicts this will lead to legal battles.

Since indigenous people are fighting these climate battles in court and in their forests, she says it's important to represent their communities in spaces like COP25. But she's disappointed indigenous people are still being "invisibilized" at such events.

Plus, countries like Ecuador attend climate conferences and make "beautiful speeches," while indigenous territories are being conceded to oil and mining companies, she says.

This causes mixed feelings about events like the U.N. COP25 and doubts on whether activists are doing enough to succeed in stopping the climate crisis, she says.

"I know that this is what I have to do," she says, "give a voice to the people that have been silenced and the people that don't have a voice."
Cristina Kim produced this story and edited it for broadcast with Tinku Ray. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.

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Fighting Climate Change Is 'About My Home' For Indigenous Teen Activist Helena Gualinga

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Friday marks the last day of the 25th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP25. World leaders gathered in Madrid to negotiate carbon emissions and the Paris Agreement. Last year, a U.N. International Panel on Climate Change report warned the global community it only has 12 years to avoid the threat of more severe floods, droughts, extreme heat and poverty.

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led school strikes in his native Argentina
warned that “climate and ecological crisis” was the “political, economic and cultural crisis of our time”.
AS THE LEADER OF THE FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE MOVEMENT IN ARGENTINA, HE ATTENDED THE FIRST UNITED NATIONS YOUTH CLIMATE SUMMIT ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 IN NEW YORK CITY

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https://latinamericareports.com/helena-gualinga-voice-indigenous-communities-fight-climate-change/4192/

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When climate activist Helena Gualinga was a child, she lived in fear of not being able to return to the place she calls home: the Sarayaku indigenous community, located deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Living between Finland and Ecuador, Gualinga spent years and months at a time in the community throughout her childhood, and each time she left to go back to Finland, she worried that extractive industries would destroy the land.

Ecuador's indigenous Sarayaku community is one of over 800 indigenous communities in Latin America. It is small in size, made up of approximately 1,500 people who live so remotely that they can only be accessed by canoe or a small airplane.

Helena Gualinga growing up in the Sarayaku community, Ecuador, 2011. Image courtesy of Eriberto Gualinga.

Like many indigenous groups, the Sarayaku faces the constant threat of losing their land, which is highly sought after by extractive industries. These industries have been able to exploit the territory for oil exploration since 1996, when the Ecuadorian government signed a contract with national oil company Petroecuador and CGC, a subsidiary of Chevron in Argentina.

In 2002, the year Gualinga was born, CGC and members of the Ecuadorian military entered Sarayaku lands to conduct seismic oil exploration, despite the government not asking the community's permission to do so. In addition to confronting and asserting violence against members of the Sarayaku community, the company placed 1.5 tons of explosives in the forest, which destroyed sacred sites, according to the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

In 2012, the Sarakayu community took the Ecuadorian government to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights over the incident, and won. This is why Gualinga, now 17 years old, started her activism early, growing up taking part in protests and strikes alongside her family.

For Gualinga, growing up in an indigenous community is a form of activism in itself. "What is activism?" she asked Latin America Reports, rhetorically. Activism, in her opinion, is creating social change through action.

"We have had to stand up to big corporations and corrupt governments trying to get into our territories," she said, explaining how the everyday lives of indigenous people revolve around taking action to protect their land.

In her opinion, the world can learn from indigenous people's respect for the environment, and how they "risk their lives" to protect it, and apply this to the global fight against climate change.

Protecting their surroundings comes as second nature to the Sarayaku community, who live off of the land by hunting, fishing and cultivating their food.

"We value the forest as much as we value people because we believe it has a spirit," Gualinga explained. "The water is a protector, the birds are also protectors," she continued, describing how the community has gained generations worth of knowledge from the land.

Although their lifestyle is what brings these communities closest to the environment, it also places them in a particularly vulnerable position, as they do not have the resources to deal with the environmental damage that extractive industries are already causing.

This is why stopping industries like the fossil fuel industry is Gualinga's primary concern.This year, while juggling her school work, she is spearheading a campaign called ' Polluters Out' that recently launched on January 24.

Image courtesy of the Sarakayu's album.

This project involves over 200 young climate activists, scientists, indigenous people, and members of grassroots organizations from over 40 countries around the world. Latin America is heavily represented in the list of member countries, which includes Ecuador, Argentina and Colombia.

According to the project's website, 'Polluters Out' was born out of the "failure" of the COP 25 United Nations Climate Change conference, held last December in Madrid, where Gualinga spoke on a panel. This failure, its members believe, is a "symptom" of the fossil fuel industry's dominance over land, government, banks, universities, and even climate negotiations themselves.

'Polluters Out' aims to remove the fossil fuel industry from every sphere it influences, starting by presenting the organization's demands to governments who can take concrete action. The three pillars of their requests include removing fossil fuel industry influence and financing from negotiations, panels and discussions at the UN climate change conference; adding indigenous rights into the Paris Agreement; and increasing transparency over their spheres of influence.

Gualinga's early activism has earned her comparisons with the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is of the same age. Gualinga admires Thunberg and the way she has inspired people to wake up to the threat of climate change by representing her generation, which was "screaming for action," she said.

For Gualinga, it is important that young role models continue to speak up and give voices to communities who have been marginalized in the fight against climate change. Luckily, Gualinga is able to live between two worlds, enabling her to broadcast her remote community's message on the international stage from her base in Finland.

However, unlike Thunberg, who spent time striking from school and decided to put her education on hold in the name of the fight against climate change, Gualinga intends to balance her passion and her education for one more year. Before university, where she plans to study a social science, Gualinga intends to take a year off.

After her studies, one of Gualinga's hopes for the future is to return to the Sarayaku community to work and live a normal life. Until that day comes, she must keep fighting to protect it.

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Helena Gualinga is a voice for indigenous communities in the fight against climate change

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When climate activist Helena Gualinga was a child, she lived in fear of not being able to return to the place she calls home: the Sarayaku indigenous community, located deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon.