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My experiences with building bridges for climate action

Teas­er:

Yaque­mil­sa Fre­delin­da Mati­ashi Vicente (25) from Peru is an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing stu­dent, an indige­nous envi­ron­men­tal activist, a mem­ber of Fri­days for Future Peru, and pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Young Indige­nous and Ama­zon­ian Set­tlers of the Megan­toni. Here, she writes about the project BB4CA, which she was part of. The project brought togeth­er young cli­mate experts from Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean and Europe. It was finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty and it is legal­ly car­ried by the Ger­man Youth NGO Kli­madel­e­ga­tion e.V. 

March 16th was a com­pli­cat­ed day last year. I was sail­ing on the high seas for the first time and I was so hap­py about it. Sud­den­ly the news rained like flam­ing arrows to our crew: covid-19 became a threat and broke my heart. The project Sail­ing for Cli­mate Action was over.

I had hoped to bring and make my voice heard at the UN as the young indige­nous leader that I am, but every­thing changed. Sud­den­ly we were all going home with the hope of per­haps return­ing some­day. It was when a per­sis­tent group start­ed a new project, Build­ing Bridges for cli­mate action (BB4CA), that would enlight­en us as cli­mate activists. My heart was glad then, because we would go on and meet oth­er impor­tant actors in each coun­try thanks to the tire­less peo­ple who kept fight­ing to include peo­ple who can be spokesper­sons for their local­i­ties and countries.

Build­ing Bridges for Cli­mate Action (BB4CA) was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for me, because I learned to lose my fear of express­ing myself. I learned to lis­ten to each actor and each participant’s point of view.

In my coun­try the fight against cli­mate change is not talked about much, but you can see cor­rup­tion and politi­cians attack­ing each oth­er. Politi­cians fill­ing up their pock­ets while peo­ple are dying. My peo­ple are dying of hunger, they are dying of mer­cury in their blood, they are dying of covid-19, they are dying day by day because of the igno­rance that abounds.

When I attend­ed the vir­tu­al meet­ings of BB4CA I saw the oppor­tu­ni­ty for my voice to be heard and bear fruit. Hav­ing con­tacts would open doors for me to con­tin­ue shar­ing my point of view and the socio-envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems that my com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers and how we can find solu­tions to it.

I would  like more orga­ni­za­tions to launch events like this so that we can con­tin­ue to expand and con­tin­ue to build bridges for the fight against cli­mate change.

My expe­ri­ence with this project has been enrich­ing and I real­ly hope that it will be orga­nized again. It is a place where we don’t have to see any dis­tinc­tion of any kind since we are all fight­ing for one goal, although in dif­fer­ent ways, but we are all aim­ing for the same goal.

This project has real­ly opened up oppor­tu­ni­ties for me to build ties with oth­er actors. Even though we did not see each oth­er phys­i­cal­ly, our thoughts were con­nect­ed like branch­es or roots of trees through vir­tu­al meetings.

Our strug­gle does not stop, we indige­nous women are always in the front line fight­ing for our ter­ri­to­ries, as a young indige­nous woman activist I invite oth­er sis­ters to join us in this strug­gle because we are the new gen­er­a­tion fight­ing for jus­tice, for equal­i­ty, for peace and for free­dom. Noth­ing has ever been achieved before with­out a strug­gle, so let’s go ahead and build a force together.

Projects like BB4CA should nev­er end and should get more sup­port to keep push­ing for­ward this mean­ing­ful strug­gle for all.

Teas­er:

Yaque­mil­sa Fre­delin­da Mati­ashi Vicente (25) from Peru is an envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing stu­dent, an indige­nous envi­ron­men­tal activist, a mem­ber of Fri­days for Future Peru, and pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Young Indige­nous and Ama­zon­ian Set­tlers of the Megan­toni. Here, she writes about the project BB4CA, which she was part of. The project brought togeth­er young cli­mate experts from Latin Amer­i­ca, the Caribbean and Europe. It was finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty and it is legal­ly car­ried by the Ger­man Youth NGO Kli­madel­e­ga­tion e.V. 

March 16th was a com­pli­cat­ed day last year. I was sail­ing on the high seas for the first time and I was so hap­py about it. Sud­den­ly the news rained like flam­ing arrows to our crew: covid-19 became a threat and broke my heart. The project Sail­ing for Cli­mate Action was over.

I had hoped to bring and make my voice heard at the UN as the young indige­nous leader that I am, but every­thing changed. Sud­den­ly we were all going home with the hope of per­haps return­ing some­day. It was when a per­sis­tent group start­ed a new project, Build­ing Bridges for cli­mate action (BB4CA), that would enlight­en us as cli­mate activists. My heart was glad then, because we would go on and meet oth­er impor­tant actors in each coun­try thanks to the tire­less peo­ple who kept fight­ing to include peo­ple who can be spokesper­sons for their local­i­ties and countries.

Build­ing Bridges for Cli­mate Action (BB4CA) was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for me, because I learned to lose my fear of express­ing myself. I learned to lis­ten to each actor and each participant’s point of view.

In my coun­try the fight against cli­mate change is not talked about much, but you can see cor­rup­tion and politi­cians attack­ing each oth­er. Politi­cians fill­ing up their pock­ets while peo­ple are dying. My peo­ple are dying of hunger, they are dying of mer­cury in their blood, they are dying of covid-19, they are dying day by day because of the igno­rance that abounds.

When I attend­ed the vir­tu­al meet­ings of BB4CA I saw the oppor­tu­ni­ty for my voice to be heard and bear fruit. Hav­ing con­tacts would open doors for me to con­tin­ue shar­ing my point of view and the socio-envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems that my com­mu­ni­ty suf­fers and how we can find solu­tions to it.

I would  like more orga­ni­za­tions to launch events like this so that we can con­tin­ue to expand and con­tin­ue to build bridges for the fight against cli­mate change.

My expe­ri­ence with this project has been enrich­ing and I real­ly hope that it will be orga­nized again. It is a place where we don’t have to see any dis­tinc­tion of any kind since we are all fight­ing for one goal, although in dif­fer­ent ways, but we are all aim­ing for the same goal.

This project has real­ly opened up oppor­tu­ni­ties for me to build ties with oth­er actors. Even though we did not see each oth­er phys­i­cal­ly, our thoughts were con­nect­ed like branch­es or roots of trees through vir­tu­al meetings.

Our strug­gle does not stop, we indige­nous women are always in the front line fight­ing for our ter­ri­to­ries, as a young indige­nous woman activist I invite oth­er sis­ters to join us in this strug­gle because we are the new gen­er­a­tion fight­ing for jus­tice, for equal­i­ty, for peace and for free­dom. Noth­ing has ever been achieved before with­out a strug­gle, so let’s go ahead and build a force together.

Projects like BB4CA should nev­er end and should get more sup­port to keep push­ing for­ward this mean­ing­ful strug­gle for all.

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