Speaker: Withney Viviane Zodan, Bingerville, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Withney Viviane Zodan: Hello, everyone. I'm Whitney Zidan and I'm from Benin. I'm currently living in Cote d'ivoire in Africa coast and I'm sur here. So why am I taking climate action or let me start by how am I taking climate action? I'm taking climate action by focusing on climate education and raising awareness. So me and my fellow colleagues, like we used to visit primary school to educate Children about how is it important to preserve our environment to protect it. And also by doing small efforts in our daily delivery, for example, they are Children, they are babies. So for us, it's important to make them understand. It says they are young now and they will grow up and get environmental responsibility for us. Nobody teach us that our environment is going to, I don't know, it is going to collapse like uh the ecosystem that the environment is providing to us. We are not. If you got in like that, it will get you nobody that is about climate. And so for us, it's important to teach Children that is better for them to know now and they can start having good habit that will be good to tackle climate change. So what motivate us is like Children, they represent the future generation and they will inherit this planet from us. So important to teach them good habits um to keep this environment alive. And what motivates me is to contribute to building awareness and a sense of um responsibility of our environment.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Withney Viviane Zodan: So let's talk about now, what inspired me to care about climate change and seek for reservation. So that made me remember about my childhood we are having during the dry season, we have a Maron in Benin. It's kind of winter in Africa. It's kind of winter in Benin. It's not really winter but it's very cold. The weather is super cold. So during this period, our routine involves like precautions to stay warm, wearing socks and all that. We didn't used to. Our mommy was giving us tips how to bath without getting cold. So we we we created she's sharing memories. It was very nice with our families, but we've now 15 years later or 10 years later, the the weather is changing. We don't have the Aaron like the one we used to have before. And even in the the dry season, the amain season, we have rains instead of amain. So that made me think that realize that the weather is changing and uh sometimes happening. So secondly, my my master also, when I traveled for studies in London, Ghana, I witnessed the harsh of water scarcity like water was really scarce. Water was expensive we were hardly skin in fashion because we were buffing with damp water we didn't use to. So all this personal experience forced my commitment to care more about car knitting and for solution because we don't realize cars or in our environment, we may not experience GNI it may happen. We may not be in the front line of the catastrophe for extreme events until we went somewhere and we, we experienced sky meeting or we experienced something. So that's what made me inspire me to care about, can make change and seek for solution.
