Catching up with Skye, a Young Ocean Activist Inspiring Others Around the World
We caught up with Skye, a young Ocean Activist who’s inspiring others across the globe – from Europe to Australia and New York City.
Incredibly, I am writing this whilst sitting on the Pacific island of Norfolk. A tiny volcanic island that’s 2 ½ hours off the east coast of Australia. My journey to get here has been pretty unbelievable but it started a year ago when I was invited to make a climate film by Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau.
For four weeks, I travelled around Europe in an old American yellow school bus with seven other young people from across the world. We got to meet some awesome people already doing amazing work to help our planet, and we also got to challenge some of the real bad guys – global banking bosses and leaders of Nestle – the third biggest polluters on the planet.
The film, called ‘Future Council’, was recently premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival and I was invited to attend. This caused me a bit of a dilemma, Melbourne is pretty tricky to reach without flying – not my favourite activity!
The global reach of the film and its objective to inspire millions of young people to take positive action means that I can just about justify the journey however I felt I needed to do a little more.
If you already know me then you will be aware that I regularly beach clean so I felt it was time to up my game. The journey was going to be around 50 hours, so it felt right to do 50 beach cleans, pretty much every day that I had before departing.
Regardless of the weather, wind, rain and even occasional sunshine, I went out to clean up my local beaches. Along the way, I collected thousands of bits of plastic and tiny pieces of ghost fishing gear. Sadly, every tide brought in more so I guess when I get home I’ll be starting again.
The premiere week was incredible, we had various screenings and received standing ovations from audiences young and old. We had messages from schools saying that their students were so inspired by the film that they asked to stop the bus on the journey home to do a beach clean!
Hopefully, a wave of positive, hope-filled young activists has begun.
Having travelled to Australia, my dad and I seized the opportunity and we’ve spent three weeks travelling up the east coast. We’ve seen rainforests, koalas, kangaroos, emus, wombats, penguins, possums and even got incredibly close to a migrating humpback whale. The obligatory visit to Bondi Beach and Byron Bay has inspired me to improve my surfing!
What’s next?
This adventure was supposed to end right here in Norfolk Island with me visiting my friend from the film Hiva and his family. But last week we were asked to attend the United Nations Congress in New York City, to address the UN and have some high-level screenings. My adventure continues and it feels like this is the beginning of something very special, I’ll let you all know how I get on in NYC soon, but if you can’t wait to find out you can follow my adventures on Instagram (@ecochamps_in_action) or Facebook (Eco Champs in Action).
Bye for now, Skye 💚