Ambassador Spotlights: March 2022

Luis is the founder and coordinator of Pipe Q-ida. This socio-environmental organisation is one of the largest in the Amazon region for its work with children, youth, and adults on issues of conservation and the recovery of the Amazon rainforest. Their greatest achievement to date has been the conservation of the Serrania de Chiribiquete National Natural Park, the largest protected park in Colombia and the second in South America. 

UNESCO has since declared the park a mixed heritage of humanity due to its environmental, cultural, and ancestral importance. Pipe Q-ida has planted more than 40 thousand trees, resulting in over 3000 thousand hectares of primary forests, which are under the conservation of young people and their families. They have decontaminated a further 50 tons of waste from the Amazon rivers, carried out 1200 days of improvement of public places, and impacted more than 2,000 peasant families with the largest youth volunteering programme in the region with +1,000 young volunteers from all social sectors. Pipe Q-ida also creates environmental content on social media and runs educational workshops to empower cultural change. They also have a hashtag, #GuardianesDeChiribiquete, for their conservation efforts.

Kagisho Masae is the Founder and COO of Matric Live is a learning application for Grades 10-12 learners. It has study material, learning videos, self-assessment quizzes, community resources, past question papers, and answers. Matric Live is a self-paced dynamic learning application on mobile devices. Just before Covid-19 related lockdown started in South Africa, Matric Live had around 10,000 paying users on the platform.

As Kagisho and his business partner both grew up in a township, the first thing they thought of during lockdown was the township and rural children who often share textbooks, as the schools they attend may not be technologically advanced. For the entirety of 2020, they made Matric Live a free platform, increasing the user number to 630,000 learners. Matric Live created a significant positive impact on students' learning in the 2020 academic year in South Africa. Cumulatively there have been +850,000 downloads over the past two years, most of which were during the times when society was hardest hit by Covid restrictions. 

Thalita is the founder of Blend Edu, a startup that inspires, empowers, and mobilises communities to put diversity into action in companies. Blend Edu develops projects, training, and solutions to drive an inclusive culture. The startup has supported more than 60 major organisations and brands in their diversity programs, such as TIM, Cielo, OLX Brasil, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Ambev, Ipiranga, Movile, Grupo Fleury, DASA, 3M, GE Aviation, Raízen, Boehringer Ingelheim, SESC, Prudential, Porto Seguro, Arezzo, Embelleze, Telecine, Globo, brMalls, Pirelli e InterCement.

In order to have a bigger impact and foster diversity in the Brazilian ecosystem, Blend Edu has launched Diversidade SA, a virtual learning community designed for gathering companies engaged in building an inclusive culture, regardless of size or maturity level. The goal of this product is to unify in one single (digital) collaborative environment the best content about diversity (live webinars, online courses, best practices, discussion forums, etc.), making it available to companies from different sectors and industries, generating exponential impact and networked learning. On the platform Blend brings together people responsible for leading diversity within the organisation (e.g. diversity leaders, ERGs, etc.), who act as multipliers and facilitators, reaching - directly and indirectly - all employees. Because of its innovative approach, Diversidade SA won the Lead2030 2020 challenge, created by One Young World to recognize solutions impacting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Currently (March 2022), Diversidade SA has 23 organisations and Blend Edu has 8 full-time employees.

Nasha is the co-founder of Sustentabilidad Sin Fronteras, a group for young professionals dedicated to fighting climate change in Argentina and Latin America. The group created campaigns, reports, and increased awareness of carbon footprint measurement, climate change adaptation, and advocacy. They are a growing team of 15 collaborators and more than 50 volunteers.

Sustentabilidad Sin Fronteras has, since 2015, been present at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The organisation believes that all sectors of society must be part of the solution to climate change and that education is the key pathway to ensuring this. The organisation had impacted over 5,000 people through its projects. It also offers volunteering opportunities, advice, training, and regularly publishes detailed reports on key climate issues, often on an annual basis. The latest report, available on the Sustentabilidad Sin Fronteras website, synthesises the key points and issues stemming from the COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow. Sustentabilidad Sin Fronteras has several climate-related projects underway.

Greenfluidics is a Mexican Biotech startup that seeks to accelerate the transition of sustainable cities through regenerative facades that integrate their technology, the Intelligent Solar Biopanel. This innovative regenerative system seeks to transform buildings into lungs, thanks to the use of microalgae and nanotech, generating energy while cleaning the air, with an avant-garde design that takes advantage of building facades and provides thermal comfort, generating greater energy savings. In this way, through the biopanels, it will be possible to reconnect society and government with sustainability and a circular economy, since each biopanel can mitigate from 200Kg of CO2/yr and save 328KWh/yr. Thanks to their intelligence and data monitoring it will allow them to show the environmental regeneration of the site over time, and thus be able to influence the decision-making of public policies and urban developments in the region.

The Intelligent Solar Biopanel is not yet on the market, however, during its first tests and development, it has managed to mitigate more than half a ton of CO2. Greenfluidics have inspired and helped more than 3,000 young Mexican university students and entrepreneurs who seek to help climate change in the country, +15 interested countries, featured in local and international media, such as Forbes, Fortune, CNN, Televisa Media, MIT Tech Review, with +50 million people reached. The solution is currently the official representative worldwide for the Flourish Prize in SDG 7 and the Lead2030 Challenge for SDG13 supported by Deloitte.

Adrian Leitoro is the co-founder and CEO of Nature and People as One (NaPO). NAPO works with local and indigenous communities to help conserve and restore their traditional lands, protect wildlife and develop sustainable livelihoods. Adrian co-founded NaPO because he believes that a more inclusive approach to conservation is crucial. NaPO builds upon local knowledge and existing community systems to conserve the biodiversity of Northern Kenya. They partner with indigenous and local communities to implement solutions that facilitate ecosystem restoration, reduce human-wildlife conflicts and build robust nature-based enterprises.

In partnership with the UNDP and the GEF Small Grants Program, NaPO is currently documenting important trees to guide reforestation efforts. Through their Mt. Marsabit tree nursery, NaPO has supplied over 5,000 native tree seedlings for ecosystem restoration and is currently producing another 20,000 tree seedlings. NAPO also engaged 40 indigenous women in a village savings and loans model that aims to enable pastoralist women to use savings as a tool for climate change adaptation. The ‘Naliapu’ women group’ started out with $100 in savings and saved up over $2000 in their first cycle ending August 2021.

The academic organisation Green Kozminski has been active since March 2021. Green Kozminski, which is led by Agata Ordon, actively supports the Kozminski University Strategy for Sustainable Development Goals. They make every effort to ensure that the actions taken create a positive impact not only within the walls of the university but also outside. Within Kozminski Green Talks we create a space for discussion, confronting the scientific perspective with the business view of sustainable development.

Furthermore, Green Kozminski is initiating changes on the university campus by implementing smart campus solutions for example; lightweight wind turbines. Their activities to date have been recognised by the Institute for Sustainable Energy, the group has received a number of awards, alongside qualifying for the Youth Climate Pact Challenge organised by the European Commission. Green Kozminski coordinates the university's involvement in Positive Impact Rating.

Mia Kami is a Tongan singer/songwriter currently based in Suva, Fiji, who has a passion for gender equality, indigenous sovereignty, climate change & the Pacific region. She uses her music to tell my stories as a young Pacific woman. Mia strongly believes that art is the greatest form of storytelling and has the power to connect Pacific and indigenous people to their ancestors and descendants. She has been fortunate enough to share her songs in various climate spaces and events centred around women empowerment with different organisations including Pacific Women, SPC, the UN, Nia Tero and more. 

Bringing her songs into these spaces is a way for Mia, as a young Pacific woman, to reclaim the narratives and tell the authentic stories of the Pacific Islands. In 2021, she directed her first music video titled "Rooted". The vision for the music video was to encompass the beauty and resilience of the many faces and places of the Pacific. Since its premiere, "Rooted" has been played at various events including COP26 and DisOrient Film Festival 2022.