Online Environmental Peace Building Training - March 2023

Youth Ms. Paleni Iyer (pictured above in the brown jacket) shared her reflections with us, about her recent engagement in an online climate webinar training with Youth Empowerment and Environmental Management from 13^th until 17 March 2023. She represented Religions for Peace Interfaith Youth Climate Forum (RfP-IYCF) and Greenpeace Africa. Paleni is an environmental management student at UNISA and is actively involved in climate justice activities.

Youth Ms Paleni Iyer writes: "Aside from the embarrassing moment of having to explain during my speech, on an international platform, that I was experiencing load shedding in South Africa, which was also significant to point out the current state of emergency in our country, I was extremely honored to be a part of something so meaningful. 

It was an exciting start to participate with a new organization called Youth Empowerment and Environmental Management, and I had the opportunity to be the first speaker for a five day online youth training.  

My presentation (in the image below), mainly focused on how my culture and way of life has influenced me to become an active environmentalist and be a volunteer for Greenpeace Africa: Durban Local Group and Religions for Peace Interfaith Climate Youth Forum (RfP-IYCF). Key areas of my talk were, being born a vegetarian and consuming mainly homegrown foods and coming from a background of a zero waste lifestyle. I had explained how to live such a lifestyle to encourage, motivate and inspire other youth to do the same. After witnessing and being impacted from climate change and lack of resources, I made the decision and choice to be a part of the solution in pursuing my journey in Environmental Management. 

Above picture are some of the participants. It was inspiring to be talking aside Ugochukwu Henry from Nigeria and Greshma Raju from India, Eco Peace Teen Cafe. Whom both highlighted on Peace and conflict, understanding the relationship between the environment and peace building. 

Henry believes that in order for one to stay free from conflict, peace is required and that peace is delineated into different areas based on an individual. Conflict usually arises from a high demand of natural resources and leads to a negative impact on the environment. 

Greshma Raju's work is rather inspiring and you can read more about it from RfP- IYCF’s previous blog post. Click here to review the post.  

Thank you to Religions for Peace Interfaith Climate Youth Forum, for this opportunity! I really appreciate being involved in such activities. Looking forward to many more sessions like these and to engage in further interfaith climate dialogues!"

"Are we really doing enough? A ticking clock has started, we don't need to wait for 2050, we need stronger goals." - Climate Activist Melati Wijsen