Speaker: Nada Mohamed, Alexandria, Egypt
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Nada Mohamed: Hello, everyone. Uh My name is Adam Mohammed. I'm a climate activist from Egypt and professionally. I'm a public policy researcher as well as a teaching assistant. So how and why did I start on this crazy journey? Well, for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I, I knew about climate change very late in time. I was 19 years old and I learned that I live in a sinking city. Uh My city Alexandria will be submerged if we go on that, right by 2015. And I was filled with so much fear, anger and Bilder. Why did I not get to study these things in school and why are we not taking proper action on a national level? That's why I went on a journey of education in order to confer this knowledge to other people. And that's where I found myself delivering a lot of projects about the impact and the disproportionate impact to be more accurate of climate change on women as well as trying to demystify very technical terms that climate change is usually associated with. And that intimidates a lot of people from understanding about the issue that we're currently facing. And making the, making it more accessible for people. That's why I created with my fellow activists in Egypt, a project called GV and empowering young girls to not just be educated about climate change, but empowering them to learn about climate advocacy skills as well as to penetrate green careers. Because unfortunately, in Egypt, only 8% or even less work in the renewable energy industry. And that's one green job, let alone the hundreds and millions that will be created and women will be increasingly left behind from. So, in the project, we use a diversity of different tools, uh art, poetry, as well as games like the climate first in order to conquer this knowledge and to get them to feel truly empowered with the knowledge, to create the innovations that we really need.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Nada Mohamed: So who or or what inspired me to care about climate change and climate solutions? Well, a lot of things too, but I think if I can pick one reason is my love for my city and my desire to not ever see it under water. And maybe I can take a little bit of a twist on the question and, and to tell you why I continued on this journey despite feeling that I might be an impostor on the space and that I don't have as much knowledge as other climate actives in the industry. And that is one person or two people. Uh First was my sister who has been a constant support, a climate cheerleader as we would like to call it to push ourselves over the frustrations and um failures. You might call it that when it comes to our climate journey and dissemination of climate education in, in my country. And the second person, second reason as to why I'm persevering on this amazing journey. As someone who had told me in my very first climate training that we are not here because we're experts, we're just here because we're human and we want to create change. And from there on, I knew that this was my calling and no matter how I feel about not being well versed about the topic or feeling like an impostor or not as ready. My calling as a human being, my my duty as a human being to be even more accurate was to persevere on that journey and to provide my country with the space and the people who can be vocal and can represent the voice of youth and marginalized people and people of color who don't usually get the chance to be represented in global and regional conferences.
