An Open Letter to my Fellow Changemakers
By Maria Wilvenna Añora
This essay received an Honorable Mention in the Global Changemakers Essay Competition 2020.
As of this moment, I am writing this letter just a few hours before the introduction of the community quarantine in Metro Manila announced by the President of the Philippines yesterday due to the COVID-19 situation. Having to stay at home and to religiously practice social distancing makes the extrovert part of me revolt in silence. I was thinking, moving forward with my advocacies would have to be done with a slower pace for now as flights will have to be cancelled and gatherings are prohibited. The planned community knowledge transfer of AtoANI* in collaboration with World Vision to help the upland farmers in Cebu will have to be postponed. Also, the pitching session of AtoANI BioPack* for the Plastic SmartCities Innovation competition will push through but it will have to be done online.
Despite these change in plans and committed activities, the lockdown allowed me to in a way take a step back and reflect on what is happening in the world today and the role that I play as one of the many young social entrepreneurs and changemakers out there who wanted to share their advocacy, create a positive impact how minimal it may be and help in addressing pressing global issues. This is an open letter to all of us who want to make the world a more sustainable, fair and inclusive place to live.
“Dear Young Social Entrepreneurs and Changemakers,
I know that times nowadays are very trying and hard. I wish we could learn as much from how we are currently handling the COVID-19 pandemic around the world as to how we should have worked and should in the future work on the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which has been shared back in 2015. We are but a decade away to fulfilling these goals in our target year 2030. Question is, will we be able to achieve it by this time? At the rate of what we are doing and how we are doing it to address these global issues, we may be too far away from achieving these goals.
If COVID-19 has a publicist, then we should hire this person. My social media feeds, news feeds, messenger and even text messages nowadays are all flooded with updates, facts, precautionary measures, actions and discussions towards fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. People are panicking. People are cooperating with the Government. People are acting on it.
If we do the same for the global issues on climate change, global warming, hunger, poverty, health and well-being, access to quality education, gender inequality, access to clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, inequality, responsible consumption and production, peace and security, justice, and water, air and land pollution; then I don’t think we will not fear not being able address these issues by 2030.
The start of the decade has only begun but the world has already suffered a lot of natural disasters, political conflicts, deaths and a new virus pandemic. Indeed, what could potentially happen in a decade’s time happened in just barely three (3) months past 2020. The US killing of Iran’s Soleimani which triggered an Iranian revengeful missile strike on a US Military base in Iraq and the downing of a Ukrainian plane by the Iranian military killing all 176 people on board. We are close to having World War 3. The worst locust invasion in Kenya in 70 years has hundreds of millions of desert locusts that swarm in eastern Africa. Not far from home is the eruption of Taal Volcano crushing homes, killing livestock and crops and forcing over 135,000 people into shelters. The 6.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey which caused 41 deaths and 1,600 injured. The Kashmir avalanche in the Himalayan region which killed more than 100 people. The deadly bushfires in Australia which killed 33 people and an estimated 1 billion native animals while destroying 2,500 homes and more than 100,000 square kilometer of wilderness area. The flooding in Indonesia with at least 83 people killed. And as of March 14, 2020 15:15 GMT, the COVID-19 pandemic with more than 150,000 cases, 5,617 deaths and the risk of continuing the spread around the world.
If these actual happenings are not pressing enough to act now to address our global issues, then I don’t know what else should still happen to force us to open our eyes to these problems that we have been ignoring for a long time already.
As I would quote a line in Dickinson’s 1768 The Liberty Song, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall”, I believe that now more than ever, however small we may consider ourselves as compared to the Taipans, Unicorn Startup Founders and World Billionaires out there, we can all make a difference if we collectively act on our solutions. Not as separate entities but as a Global Community of Changemakers.
Sincerely,
One of the many Changemakers who wanted to make a difference”
*AtoANI is a social enterprise that produces and distributes naturally farmed fresh produce and food products using a Sustainable and Climate Change adaptive Agriculture Business Model (https://www.atoani.com/)
*AtoANI BioPack is a new venture under AtoANI which tackles the world’s plastic problem through creation of a biodegradable packaging from agro-industrial waste (https://www.atoani.com/atoani-biopack)
Global Changemakers has an unshakable mission of supporting youth to create positive change in their communities. A global pioneer in supporting youth-led development, they have trained youth from over 180 countries and provided grants to over 360 youth-led projects, which have had a combined impact on over 6,2 million people. www.global-changemakers.net
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article belong to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or Global Changemakers.
