Green Hope Foundation

Born on World Environment Day in 2000, Kehkashan is a global youth leader at the forefront of the climate justice movement. A Forbes 30 Under 30, Kehkashan founded her organisation Green Hope Foundation in 2012 after attending Rio+20 as one of its youngest international delegates and was also the youngest of the 193 youth representatives of UN Member States at the adoption ceremony of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015.

Green Hope Foundation combines grassroots action with advocacy at the highest levels of policy-making, to create a just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Its mission is to mitigate the adverse anthropogenic impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss which disproportionately affect regions and communities least responsible for it. Its activities have mobilised over 2,000 young volunteers since 2012. The organisation has established activities in 25 different countries and reached increased the environmental awareness of over 140,000 young people through its various programmes. During the Covid-19 outbreak, they have run numerous initiatives around the world. One such ongoing project in Bangladesh is empowering women and girls through sustainability educating, in particular on sanitation and hygiene, and protecting them from violence.

Since attending the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals, the impact of the organisation has accelerated, and in the past five years, the various projects have cumulatively planted a staggering 142,000 trees, restored over 200,000 hectares of mangrove forests, and collected 2000 tonnes of waste. This is just a snapshot of the organisation's impact which has been generated with the assistance of 2060 volunteers around the world, helping to educate more than 98,000 children of the need for sustainable action.

Kehkashan is also a dedicated member of One Young World's Community and hosted the YMCA Youth Leaders Conference and moderated One Young World's North America Climate Webinar.