2022 YOUNG WOMENS SPEECH CONTEST winner speech

Theme: Mother Earth, Our Home – Connect, Protect and Care

Our Sustainable future

Come with me to the year 2001, where a Kurdish girl was born to a Syrian family with two older sisters, one year age gap in between. Now I want you to visualise my home in Syria before the war; jasmine wrapped streets of Afrin, stretching from my house to my auntie's apartment and all the way to my school. I would walk these streets confidently, wearing all sorts of colourful shirts and skirts. Every day was a chance to try a different outfit. These outfits weren't new clothes, they were run-down from my two older sisters and sometimes cousins. With my mom's seamstress skills, a size fit and new crocheted flower detail, an old shirt would magically transform into beautiful outfits. Recycling clothes for her daughters was not only a creative but a needed project.

Three years later my only brother was born, and my mom now having to provide for four kids faced all sorts of scarcity. She wisely cooperated with the neighbour's housewife who had one daughter and two sons. She traded my worn baby overalls for her sons' small jackets and jeans in return. Babies grow fast and they consume clothes that lasts few months, which seemed like a waste of resources, so mom and other Syrian housewives would find creative and sustainable ways to protect and care for their families. Mother Earth meant mothers caring for Earth through motherhood, times of scarcity and much needed eco-solutions. However, women have always been part of sustainability projects, even before becoming household caretakers. In her teenage years, my mother would reuse grocery shop plastic bags as the bin bag and that blue tin cookie box would be reused as a sewing kit storage box, always making us hope we find cookies once more.

In recent years, recycling clothes has become a trend, with thrift shops gaining popularity in today's trend ridden society. Additionally, more charities have installed donation centres where people leave their undesired things such as clothes to be used by people in need, such as the refuges of Ukraine. The process of ethical shopping habits is becoming more widespread especially with more news about animal extinction spreading and the ecological integrity being threatened. We all care about the welfare of our world, and it has never been as easy as we have it today to carry and spread a message with large numbers of people across the globe. There has been many sustainability projects that I like to share with my friends such as the Petit Pli clothing brand that are known for their slogan "clothes that grow" (Petitpli, 2022). Ryan Mario Yasin was a family guy inspired to make cloth that grow after his failed attempt at gifting his new-born nephew cloth who grew faster than the delivery time. The technology by Ryan Mario Yasin has allowed this eco-friendly, award-winning brand to produce cloth out of recycled water bottles, with designs of capacity to grow through 7 sizes, providing consumers a mindful shopping habit.

Not just big corporations are acting for our planet, an ambitious individual can make great change. The Young Champion of the Earth 2020 award winner Matee coined the quote "one man's trash is another mans treasure" after collecting industrial and commercial plastic waste in her country Kenya to produce low-cost bricks called "Gjenge pavers", these being lighter yet stronger than concrete. Her actions have impacted our environment as well as provided 112 job opportunities for waste management workers, as well as other unemployed women in Kenya (Pawar, 2021). It also inspired me and many other youth groups from all over the globe to become more sustainable, it was a well spread news thanks to the United Nations honouring Matee with the highest environmental award that we all strive for. To have women like Matee using her education degree to influence policy makers to consider eco-friendly building materials in engineering is exactly the kind of action we need to tackle environmental issues like plastic waste pollution towards a greener world. Another outspoken women who is fighting for our planet that deserves recognition is Autumn Peltier born in 2004, despite being 3 years younger than me already made a huge impact by advocating for safe and clean water in Canada gaining her the title Chief Water Commissioner of the Aniishnabek Nation in 2019 (NAAEE, 2022).

What these women have in common is empowering drive to care and protect outside of the heteronormative family stereotype as housewives, they want to be part of the change and by doing so they have inspired others to join them. It is not an easy task to care for the world but there will always be obstacles in the way of victory. If my mom did not use handed down clothes, then my dad would have struggled to support us. If Yasin was not a caring family member who tends to the struggles of mothers and their struggles with childrenswear, Petit Pli wouldn’t have existed. If Mattee did not believe in her ideas she would have stopped trying after the first rejection of her sustainability project. If Peltier did not raise her voice, then no one would have listened to her and the water scarcity issue in Ontario would have been ignored. Let us all support one another from sister to sister, mother to daughter, uncle to nephew because we are all a big family residing in one big home, and it is our responsibility to take care of mother earth. Women have always been part of the sustainability project. We are actively acting towards a greener world, and we do have a bright vision for the future, we want to pave the way for our children to protect mother earth the same way our mothers took care of us.