Bringing it Home: Advocating For Change as a Young Person using the SDGS as a benchmark.
I got a message from one of my mentees Esther Nwani about today's celebration of Earth Day. It was a well curated message but I felt something was missing.
How do you bring this home? I asked her. She asked what I meant. I said she needed to share about plastics from her experience, what's happening in her community and how she can bring about small changes.
I gave similar answers to another mentee as she shared her answers for an application about being an SDG advocate. Her answers were well written but it also lacks the touch of home.
What do you mean by bring it home, Dr Weyoms?
For example, let's use today's conversations about plastics and planet. The way a young person who lives in London would engage with this theme is different from how a young person who lives in Warri would do it.
For a Warri person, there is little or no recycling happening, neither do we have recycling bins on the streets or our houses. For this person, he/she would have grown up with not throwing plastic bottles because they are used to store drinking water in fridges or freezers. These bottles would be used to storing 'groundnut and/or palm oil. Also if you check their kitchen, you would see heaps of nylon 'paper' bags (plastic bags) used for shopping.
So you see whilst the young advocate in London might be writing to the parliament about plastic ban and calling for policy reforms, the other person might be sharing their frustrations about the silence of a local government over basic refuse dumps, and how challenging it might be to change the behaviour of people flinging their plastic bags anywhere and everywhere.
Their approaches to advocacy to drive change will be different with the common denominator as plastics.
That's what I mean by bringing it home. Putting into context what you are advocating for.
How is this global or national issue affecting you or those in the community you live in? Can you bring your perspective to the table? What does change look like?
When it aligns, everything comes together. Also, this is not limited to just environmental issues. It can be applied to education and health.
When a young person is able to do this, your messages would be relatable. You will also be able to think of local and appropriate ways to solve matters arising in the grassroots and even nationally and globally 🤞
I hope someone has found this helpful 🙌🏿
📷 Photo was taken during my last trip home. This is just one of the many bridges in Warri where people dump refuse including lots of plastic🙈. Yes, I know what you are thinking.