Girl Warriors: How 25 Young Activists Are Saving the Earth
This book is for all of the Warriors in the world including my own Mae and Camille Thank you to the activists in this book for sharing your hopes and your struggles giving your time trusting me You are the real storytellers xoxo Rachel Sarah
Jamie Margolin 67 Imogen Sumbar 72 Bella Lack 76 Malaika Vaz 80 Mabel Athanasiou 85 Elizabeth Wathuti 89 Sarah Goody 94 Vanessa Nakate 98 Haile Thomas 102 Isabella Fallahi 106 Acknowledgments 110 Resources to Explore 113
Introduction As I write this it is 9 00 on a summer morning in northern California It should be bright and sunny but the sky is filled with smoke from wildfires that are raging across the entire West Coast I’m watching the culmination of centuries of human disregard for our environment The ash is so thick it blocks out the sun letting in only a dark orange-reddish hue It might as well be evening We’ve been sheltered at home for months as COVID-19 spreads and now the wildfires are burning again My younger daughter has moved into my bed because she’s so worried In the dark I get up to work on this book when my older daughter walks in looks at the sky and says How can everyone go on like this is normal We can’t The girls and young women in these pages know this They have grown up in crisis watching as the adults around them destroy the Earth From a young age they’ve spoken up about the violence racism and greed they’ve witnessed That’s why I wrote this book to amplify the voices of young climate activists from around the world Climate change is without a doubt the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced By 2018 when Greta Thunberg began her School Strike for Climate at age 15 in Sweden the media had begun to wake up A little But Greta hasn’t been alone in this fight Thousands of activists around the world some inspired by Greta others who’ve been fighting for the climate since before ix
