Page 112 - Vogue - India (January 2020)

LEAH NAMUGERWA
15, UGANDA

“If adults are not willing to take
leadership, I and fellow children will
lead them. Why should I watch on as
environmental injustices happen before
my eyes?” said Leah Namugerwa last
year, when she addressed the Rwandan
capital Kigali. In 2018, she heard about
Greta Thunberg’s protest and soon
came to a few realisations of her own.
For one, lives were being claimed by
landslides and hunger due to drought
in Uganda, and both relayed back to
climate change. So she protested on
a Friday near the Kampala suburb she
lives in. A group of teens joined in
and they began to lead the Fridays for
Future strikes in Uganda. Next came
planting 200 trees on her 15th birthday
and demanding that President Yoweri
Kaguta Museveni’s government ban
plastic bags (#BanPlasticUG).

THE NEW AVENGERS

They were born into a world of melting ice caps and polarised politics, but
they know how to spark a revolution with a hashtag and they’re fixing a world

we broke. Meet Gen-Z’s climate change activists. By ShahnazSiganporia

NADIA NAZAR
17, USA
“I try to be positive when thinking about the future of the planet. It looks sustainable and
inclusive—everyone living cohesively together... And this is why I am a part of the generation COURTESY MARTINA ORSKA; GETTY IMAGES; SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
of the Green New Deal,” says Nadia Nazar, founder, co-executive director and art director of
Zero Hour, an intersectional movement of youth activists fighting for a healthy planet. Nazar
started at the age of 12. Now 17 years old, she’s one of the veterans of the youth movement.
Her activism began with her love for animals and wanting to promote vegetarianism:
“Learning that the climate crisis is causing the extinction of so many innocent species woke me
up to climate change,” she says. Today she’s busy mobilising climate voters for the 2020 US
Election and working with other Youth Climate groups to organise Earth Day 50 in April.

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