... to current actions!

  Every year my old high school invites guest speakers to workshops with students to inspire and inform career pathways. In 2017, I heard a presentation from an American educator who presented the reality of the climate crisis by focusing on the pollution of oceans and the extinction of marine life in the next 50 years. This was a shocking realisation because we talked about microplastics being found in fish and how plastic pollution has caused man-made islands. He mentioned some of the most commonly found items thrown away were plastic bottle caps. I was drinking from a plastic bottle.
  This inspired me to visit my family home on the coast of our big island Savai'i. I was shocked to see the horrifying effects of coastal erosion on our land. That moment was a wake-up call for me because I realised if I don't do something now, I will not have a home to come back to when I am older. So from then on, I made a commitment to do my part in protecting marine life, my island, and our planet.
  Since then, I've been busy campaigning, advocating, and fundraising to support the climate movement across high schools and the National University of Samoa.
  As the president of my high school's Environment Club, I led the club's efforts to ban single-use plastics from the school canteen – passed as an official policy in April 2019. We've also fundraised to help install three filtered water stations at my school; and to pay for a water tank as a humanitarian effort for Kiribati, after record king tides and flash floods damaged many homes in September 2019. We've also planted over 100 native trees at my school, and over 1,000 in our national nature reserves. We've also visited other high schools to talk about the impacts of climate change on our islands, and the importance of young people being represented in climate conversations, as well as being a youth delegate myself.