Striving for a sustainable future through the education and empowerment of children
- Liselot Braak
- Dec 23, 2022
- 5 min read
A personal conversation with Eleni Andreadis
About Eleni
On Sunday the 18th of December we had the pleasure to host our second Tipping Point Cocktail gathering. It has been a delight to listen to the engaging and inspirational Eleni Andreadis, writer and sustainability expert.
Eleni has always had the will to act. She studied sustainable management, but really found her calling during a gap year working for a non-profit organisation in Honduras. Here she surrounded herself with people who had made sustainability their job and saw possibilities arise. She deepened her knowledge with a masters degree focusing on environmental policy and media, and decided to dedicate her thesis to the sceptics of ‘The (un)willingness to act!’. The scientific evidence is there, we are experiencing the effects in our everyday lives, so why is nobody taking environmental action?
Scepticism, unfortunately, is still at the source of climate change and biodiversity discussions, although the issue seems to have shifted from ‘not willing to act’ to ‘we have run out of time’. Whilst working as an environmental consultant on a Participant Media documentary on climate change, Eleni learned about a group of Indian children taking action against plastic pollution. This is when she realised that children do understand, they actually get it! What is it in children that makes them act, where we, grown-ups, seem to struggle?
The idea of Eleni’s non-profit organisation Planet Agents was born. Working with over 100,000 kids across Greece and abroad she deepened her knowledge, carefully studied what was driving these children and wrote many well-received children’s books about sustainability. Planet Agent’s mission says it all: ‘To create a sustainable future through the education and empowerment of children.’
What we can learn from our children In May 2022 Eleni gave an amazing Ted talk. We will share the highlights of her Ted talk below, but feel free to check out the full version here.
What makes children so eager to jump at every possibility to take on the challenge of climate change? Eleni believes that it comes down to 3 gifts; Gifts that children have in abundance but we lose growing up, even in the face of impending catastrophe.
The gift of knowing how to be a protagonist A protagonist is defined as a leading character in events. A hero is someone who answers the call to challenge, to an adventure. Everybody is capable of being a hero. In Eleni’s books, children are protagonists, heroes. Children develop a sense of self through narrating stories in which they are the heroes. They don’t shy away from placing themselves in the centre of the narrative. For most of us, as we grow up this innate ability is impeded by the pressures of society. Modesty and humility are praised but this sometimes makes us shy away from being protagonists raising our voices. Children have not yet changed due to this pressure. In order to rise to the challenges of today we all need to become (or remain) protagonists. We are all contributing to the problem and need to take individual responsibility in responding to it. We no longer feel we are the starplayer in our own lives. Society, education, life moulds us into being practical and realistic, and we praise the unpretentious. In order to save our lives, our homes, our planet, we will need to rise above average. We need to understand that the sum of our individual actions is what’s threatening our quality of life, health and safety and act upon that.
The gift of wonder We need to comprehend the consequences of our way of living, and for that we need to reawaken our sense of wonder. Children are full of this incredible quality, they are curious and open minded. As we grow many of us lose this sense of wonder. We become more distracted, busy and therefore single minded. Which is a shame, because I believe we can only understand the cost of our actions, the real value or our life - of luxuries like consuming meat, buying fast fashion or using single use plastic - if we maintain a sense of wonder. Wonder asks us to reassess our values and our relationship with all that is other than ourselves, with nature and each other. can lead us to innovative, radically new solutions.
The power of ambition So, we need protagonists with a sense of wonder, but we need them to be ambitious too! Children think everything is feasible, whilst we adults often see the risk or challenge, instead of the possibilities. Not all adults! Consider the vision of Jadav Payeng, known as ‘the Forest Man’. Since 1979 he has singlehandedly been planting one tree every day on a river island in the Assam region of India. This has not only created a forest now larger than Central Park in New York, it has created a habitat for wildlife, and it keeps growing Wonder-filled, ambitious protagonists can create a forest of change. These are the green skills we desperately need to tackle the environmental crisis. What the youth movement has achieved is remarkable, proving beyond any doubt that we should seek to learn from children. Their ambition and clarity of thought is far from childish; It is more sensible than anything going through our world-leaders’ minds as we speed to the cliff.
Putting our learnings into practice
Now, where does this leave us, adults? How can we support our children, learn from them, act with them? As mentioned in the introduction, adults are often sceptical. Adults tend to go back to fear as a driver. Either the fear to act, which Eleni came across when writing her thesis, or the fear that we are running out of time, a reason we often come across nowadays. But we also feel the guilt of leaving our issues to be solved by the next generation.
Eleni shares 4 concrete actions we can all embrace towards achieving a sustainable future with and for our children.
Share Children are exposed to environmental issues continuously. We can no longer sweep it under the carpet. We need to have conversations with our children to help them deal with the big feelings that are associated with these heavy topics.
Learn Educate our children and ourselves to gain confidence and knowledge about climate change. Through understanding the topic the willingness to act upon it will increase. We need to accept that we make mistakes; no-one is perfect. So we must not get disheartened but keep going. Read and share positive stories that will motivate us; there are so many like the amazing results Greta Thunberg achieved and the undeniable role of the individual. Enjoy the value of exploration and enjoy it together.
Act It is difficult to love something we don’t really know. We need to regain the love for nature, the respect for its beauty, to be able to preserve and protect it. Go outside, spend time in nature. Enjoy the fresh air in spring and the colours of fall. Once we feel that love and respect again, we can start modelling the behaviour we would like to see in our children. Things that might seem small, can be the beginning of something big. Focussing on local issues might help to make the problems resonate more with our children. Changing habits takes time, so we have to allow ourselves time to change. Let’s be patient.
Unite Some things can be achieved alone (remember Jadav Payeng’s amazing forest example), but sometimes it will help to connect, to create a community. Eleni learned a wise lesson by surrounding herself with people who act, dream, energise and empower those around them. We can do the same! Through listening to the inspirational people around us, offering our help, and joining a community. We are not alone.
And that brings us to the reason we are here tonight, at Tipping Point Cocktails. To be together, be inspired and act. And with that, Eleni concludes and opens the discussion. But not before she takes us back to one of the skills our children master, but we might need to search for, within ourselves.
She lowers her voice, asks us to close our eyes, breathe and wonder…
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