The fight against climate change shouldn’t come out of fear, but out of love, and taking action against the climate crisis means the narrative needs to change, a Qatar Foundation ( QF) panel session at the Youth4Climate conference in Milan has heard. “We need a fierce love for the world,” Lina Nayel al-Tarawneh, co-founder of Green Mangroves, told a discussion hosted by Qatar Foundation International, a member of QF, during the global youth-driven event.
As a medical student, al-Tarawneh said she wants to see medicine and climate change activism work hand-in-hand. “Both medicine and climate change activism are healing practices. If you look around, we are seeing so many diseases, such as heart diseases and cancers, because of our environment, because of the food we eat,” she said.
“If we take people outside to experience nature, they realise how beautiful this world is, and they take interest in knowing and loving this world,” she said. “So, push people to fight climate change with love and not fear.”
Al-Tarawneh was joined by Cynthia Bolton, head of Gifted Education and Manager of Learning 365 at QF’s Pre-University Education; Oweis al-Salahi, a youth advocate from Education Above All; and Jennifer Geist, a global education consultant at Qatar Foundation International, who also moderated a discussion titled Connecting Youth Globally to Make Impacts Locally: Teaching Sustainability, held in partnership with Earth Day.
During the session, panelists shared their journeys in climate change activism and how their roles impact and contribute toward this. Explaining the role of educators in the area of climate change activism, Bolton said: “The concept of Learning 365 is to give a platform to the youth to extend their ideas out of the classrooms, and reach beyond what the regular curriculum can offer.
“We support students to explore areas of the world that previously may not been explored in traditional classroom settings – for example, climbing a mountain. In doing this, we are allowing them to explore sustainability and facets of the environment.”
Explaining what sparked his interest in climate change activism, al-Salahi, an Education Above All Youth Advocate and a student at QF partner university Northwestern University in Qatar, said that when he was a teenager, he would visit playgrounds littered with plastics, and the climate change or the harmful effects of plastics never crossed his mind – until a teacher sat him and his friends down.
“She explained to us that if we aren’t going to care of our planet, no one else will. So, we physically picked up all the trash. Her words really stuck with me,” al-Salahi said.
Al-Salahi believes education is the foundation in knowing how to approach issues, and that educators shouldn’t limit students to certain subjects. Everyone, he said, has a passion and a fire inside them. She added: “We should let the youth pick what they want. The topic of climate change is linked to behaviour, and once we are aware of our social abilities and consequences, we will make better choices – which will happen from education."
 
 
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