Youth-Powered Change

Founding council member, JJ Debenham, is interview on Australia’s ABC Gold & Tweed Coasts Radio. Listen to the interview here.

Twenty-nine of us sat in the dark, discussing the Council’s governing documents and administrative obstacles. We consulted each other about objectives, marketing, and networking. We shared our hopes for the future of our group and its cause. Excitement mounted as each of us considered the organization’s potential. Our shared core values of passion for wildlife and desire to conserve it coursed through our conversation. Older soon-to-be founding members spoke quickly, explaining the possible magnitude of the group’s capabilities. We knew that a ‘global network of youth’ was original and unlike any other group. The Council was materializing.

During the week of 19-25 April 2008, about 100 youth activists from around the world assembled in Orlando, Florida at Jane Goodall’s first Global Youth Summit. We came with different passions, but all shared the thread of environmentalism. The most passionate wildlife conservationists among the group came together when an Australian participant suggested forming an organization designed to fund wildlife projects around the world. With help from two staff members from Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots organization, this amazing group of people met three times during the summit to form a foundation. We came up with the Global Youth Council for Wildlife Conservation (GYCWC). The Council decided to affiliate itself with Roots & Shoots, but to remain a separate entity. While the Council traces its origins to Roots & Shoots, it wanted to freely pursue conservation with no obligations to another organization. The Roots & Shoots staff had scheduled many summit workshops and seminars, but the foundation of the GYCWC was spontaneous.

This young organization, comprised of young activists, has decided upon the first wildlife project it will finance. Two Council members from Nepal, Manoj Gautam and Rajan Subedi are currently working to rehabilitate various species of wildlife in their area, and need to establish a rehabilitation center. They have worked to rehabilitate monkeys, vultures, owls, snakes, bears, leopards, and more. The Council will dedicate the next two months to raising 5,000 USD to contribute to the Nepalese wildlife center.

Each eager member agreed to actively raise funds for the conservation causes that the Council deemed appropriate, and to share resources from our thirteen respective countries. The Council has representatives of Australia, Austria, Argentina, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nepal, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, and Tanzania. As a founding member of this organization, I honestly believe that each member loves the others’ causes as much as his/her own. The Council’s core tenet is the protection of wildlife, regardless of where the wildlife is. All of us are inspired to contribute, to the greatest of our abilities, to Nepal’s first wildlife rehabilitation center in Kathmandu.

–Mark Hargrove