Speaker: Luyanda Mndzebele, Mbabane, Eswatini
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Luyanda Mndzebele: I love how I don't even have to think about this. The main reason I'm taking action around climate change is because I love plants. You can see that tree behind me. I just adore plants. I think they are the most, they are the most beautiful things and how they are able to grow in weird places like this water and just still try. They just give me so much hope, you know, when I'm feeling distraught whenever I see something green, I just think even if it gets yellow, it gets dark, there's going to be a positive at the end. And that's why I'm interested in climate change. And I love food and I understand there's babies helping us get access to food in certain places of the world. And I just find that really fascinating and I'm taking action through learning. So I'm maximizing on a lot of learning opportunities. I'm a volunteer for some NGO S that are focused on climate change adaptation as well as um getting more communities, especially real communities. I love real communities. I just love the simplicity of life and how most of their lives are surrounded by nature. And the cows, the animals, the animals at my home and they were paying for my school fees for a long time. So most of my work is around empowering rural communities through opportunities to access, through um opportunities to access through climate change programs and adaptation programs. When I work with NGO S and I am also participating as an ambassador for climate change for different programs such as UCYN and also um FX B recently. And I'm using this learning opportunities to build capacity because in order for you to make effective change, you have to be knowledgeable and I have to be knowledgeable for them.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Luyanda Mndzebele: Another one. I love those questions. So I first got to introduce myself in the first video. So my name is Leanda. I'm Miss Swin and who or what inspired me? It was my dad in my dear God. It inspired me having to realize that at times there will be dry spells and I wouldn't, I would have to travel really long distances to get water for my plants. Really made me aware of the problems around climate change and staying in the rural areas. I just noticed how scared things such as water and food become because of the change in climate patterns and how everyone who has little to none to no income has to rely on buying food from the shop. And that's literally hunger for most homes. So my experiences in my community have inspired me to care about climate change because of how it disproportionately affects them and affects their livelihood. So it's my garden, it's my community and it, it has shown me that it's so important to find solutions and especially to find solutions that are sustainable and solutions that can be implemented on a small scale in terms of community that's why I've tried things such as organic gardening and encouraging people in my community to smoke, to keep small gardens and also like recycle the water they use because water is scarce, especially in the area, the part of the country where I stayed and also encourage them to just find opportunities to collaborate as communities because I believe there's so much part in communities doing things together rather than communities receiving free food. And I think I've discussed this with my stepmother several times that it doesn't help people to bring them food because you're gonna just deplete it and then they're back to step one hungry. Help this again. So I think for me finding climate change solutions is finding something that a community can use to be better.
