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The Sustainable Hour no. 515 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guest in The Sustainable Hour no. 515 is Pimer Peace Monica, founder and executive director of the Nile Girls Forum, an organisation that empowers marginalised girls and young women in Uganda.
. . .
The 515th Sustainable Hour covers various topics related to climate change, social justice, and youth empowerment.
Pimer Peace Monica from Uganda emphasises the importance of including women in decision-making processes and addressing the specific needs of vulnerable communities in the face of climate change. She also touches on the role of international connections and funding in sustaining the organisation’s work.
Overall, our conversation with Peace highlights the need for collective action and meaningful youth engagement in creating a more just and sustainable world.
. . .
Pimer Peace Monica, 30, is the founder and executive director of Nile Girls Forum – a young women-led organisation focusing on elevating resilient girls and young women with emphasis on leadership and governance, sexual and reproductive health and rights, climate action and economic development.
Through their programs, they facilitate the development of aspirations, of self-worth and of achievement of girls and women from the grass roots to competent leaders. They envision an empowered, transformed, and productive girl who can actively participate in shaping peace and justice in her community.
Peace is a youth advocate for encountering hate speech, a campaign by United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and the African Union. She made a presentation at the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights hosted in Arusha, Tanzania in 2023.
She is a trained youth advocate for governance, peace and security by United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.
Peace is also a peacebuilding advocate working with host communities and refugee communities of young women in Uganda on issues of good governance, peace and security as an enabler to achieve gender equality and sustainable development through policy advocacy. And she is the Partnership Lead for the Alumni Committee of the Mastercard Foundation Uganda.
Furthermore, she is a Board Chairperson for the Edu Child Foundation Uganda and the Advisory Board member of Green Deal Global, a board member of AFRIYAN Uganda, a Queens Commonwealth Young Leader, and a member of the Generation Democracy Network of the International Republican Institute, and a USAID / GUIDE fellow 2023.
Peace has been named among the “40 under 40” elite inspirational Ugandans 2019 and 2020 by ‘The New Vision’. She is a certified professional in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, by Centre for SET SRHR jointly delivered by The International Institute of social studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rutgers and Makerere University of Public Health.
. . .
Nile Girls Forum‘s mission is to create solutions and platforms that groom vulnerable girls to realise their life potential and contribute to sustainable peace and development.
You can contact Nile Girls Forum and follow them on their social media platforms:
→ Website: www.nilegirlsforum.org
→ Email: info@nilegirlsforum.org
→ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/nile-girls-forum
→ Facebook: www.facebook.com/nilegirlsforum
→ Twitter (X): twitter.com/nilegirlsforum
→ Instagram: www.instagram.com/nile_girls_forum_ug
→ TikTok : tiktok.com/ZMNPL9agr
. . .
We were impressed with Peace and her determined efforts to make life better for marginalised girls in her country. Her wish for the future is truly commendable:
“I would have Nile Girls having a corner in every part, every city, in every nation across the world. So that this peer pulse movement that we currently have that is only in Uganda at the moment, one of the things we see is that even after five years or even the next year, we have this peer pulse movement across the world where it’s borderless because we cannot just say, let’s this small community, but we believe if we come across the world together and join hands then all of us can meet each one of us at different points of need and we have that ability to do that.”
We sure do have that ability, Peace!
We’ll make sure that we keep in touch with Peace and follow her determined quest for a safer, more just, inclusive, peaceful and healthy world. What an inspiration!
Peace has agreed to connect us with other young leaders she has met along the way. We look forward to shining extra lumens on the work they are doing in their regions.
“When women come on board to co-create solutions, they come with first-hand experience. For example, if we’re working on a policy on sexual reproductive health, especially around maternal health, they come from an informed point of view. They also come with lived experiences. So we believe that when we get women on the decision-making table, we are bringing a policy that caters for even that woman at the grassroots level, but not just making it a vague policy that doesn’t reflect the needs of the community. So we believe, and it has been proven, that when women take up leadership positions, nations change. Achievements are met much faster.”
~ Peace Monica, Founder of Nile Girls Forum
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we
are broadcasting, the Wathaurong People, and pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future.
The traditional owners lived in harmony with the land. They nurtured it and thrived in often harsh conditions for millennia before they were invaded. Their land was then stolen from them – it wasn’t ceded. It is becoming more and more obvious that, if we are to survive the climate emergency we are facing, we have much to learn from their land management practices.
Our battle for climate justice won’t be won until our First Nations brothers and sisters have their true justice. When we talk about the future, it means extending our respect to those children not yet born, the generations of the future – remembering the old saying that, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”
The decisions currently being made around Australia to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t be around by the time the worst effects hit home. How disrespectful and unfair is that?
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CLIPS from the Hour
African perspectives and innovation
MUSIC from the Hour
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 515
Antonio Guterres:
If there is one thing that unites our divided world is that we are all increasingly feeling the heat. Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. As always we’d like to start by acknowledging that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to the elders – past, present and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded. We can’t hope to have any form of climate justice without justice for First Nations Australians. And we have so much to learn from the ancient wisdom that they honed from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before it was stolen from them. In that wisdom lies many of the answers we need as we navigate the climate emergency.
Mik Aidt:
We talk a lot also here in The Sustainable Hour about reducing our carbon footprint and, you know… we have to use reusable coffee cups and shorten our warm showers or stop using plastic straws and so on. But really – how long are we going to talk about that when we also hear that it’s just 100 companies that emit 70 per cent of all this climate pollution, the global CO2, 70 per cent by 100 companies?
Maybe our focus is wrong when we are looking at our plastic straws and our showers? Why are we not talking about this?
100 companies, that is, and why are we not talking with our politicians about changing the laws so that we can get those 100 companies under control? So that they could stop putting 70 per cent of the climate pollution that’s wrecking everything around us up in the atmosphere.
Over to Colin Mockett, who has the global overview- what’s been happening around the world. Colin Mockett OAM, what do you have for us today?
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook:
Thank you, Mik. For a start, I’d like to put in a request to actually name those 100 in a future program. But our roundup this week begins with the new UN data analysis that shows that last month, June, marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5 centigrade warmer than pre-industrial times. If you remember, that was the benchmark that the world’s nations signed that they would avoid at the 2016 Paris Accord.
And despite what we felt in Victoria on Australia’s south coast, last month was also the hottest June on record and the 13th straight record hot month. And despite the year-long 1.5°C degree mark, meteorologists have stated that the threshold won’t be formally crossed until there’s a long-term duration on the heat. So that’s still on track with temperatures hitting 47°C degrees in Pakistan, where thousands were treated for heat stroke last week. And heat waves are still affecting parts of Europe, Canada, Siberia and Antarctica.
There are some 36 million people in the US still under heat warnings, and that’s mostly throughout California and Texas, where temperatures hit 28° degrees, according to Reuters. Now this news came as Australian climate activist Laura Davie is serving three months in jail for taking part in a blockade at Newcastle’s coal terminal. In a statement to SBS, she said, “We’re facing imminent climate collapse. We can’t just sit in our beds doom scrolling, feeling awful”. And we all know that there’s something drastically wrong when we’re jailing activists and ignoring the signs that are all around our planet.
Now more than 30 activists were arrested for disrupting Australia’s coal exports. They disrupted it for 100 hours. Meanwhile, the Australian government was criticised for ignoring a UN order to compensate the people of Masig Island over a failure to protect the Torres Strait from climate change.
A freedom of information request from several newspapers revealed that back in March, a consortium of mining interests wrote to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, asking him to personally intervene in the climate action drafting process for West Australia. Now that process is titled Nature Positive Plan. Several of the signatories asked for their names and companies not to be revealed, but Hancock prospecting and Rio Tinto were prominent amongst them. Anyway, after more public opposition from the resource and fossil fuel sectors, the Albanese government backed away from the plan and instead will be introducing parts of it in what it termed tranches, with no timeline for their resolutions.
Greenpeace’s Head of Nature, Glenn Walker, described the Australian federal government’s process as “This is how politics works in Australia”, adding that the Prime Minister should urgently clarify what is happening here. Of course, we all know that he won’t.
More locally, North Geelong’s oil refinery, Viva Energy, released a media statement filled with positive green energy news about helping customers reduce their carbon footprints from plastics and cleaner diesel fuels.
But tucked away at the bottom was a note that the company still intends to continue with its push to build what it terms a ‘floating gas hub’, a permanently moored gas tanker storing gas close to Geelong’s port and city centre.
Finally, a splash of positive news. Amazon, the company, has announced that all the electricity used across its global operations was matched with 100 per cent renewable energy in 2023. That included all electricity at its data centers and corporate buildings. The online retail giant set the 100 per cent renewable energy goal for 2030, but claims to have met the target seven years ahead of its schedule. Amazon is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the and has invested in more than 500 solar and wind projects, including seven renewable energy projects in Australia. This is their own claims. I haven’t personally checked them, but it sounds like good news to me and it sounds believable. And that sliver of positive news ends our roundup for the week.
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony Gleeson:
Okay, our guest today is Pimer Peace Monica. She is the founder and executive director of the group “Nile Girls Forum”. So welcome to The Sustainable Hour, Peace. Let’s hear your story.
Pimer Peace Monica:
My name is Peace and I come from Uganda, from the northern part of Uganda, is divided into sub regions. So the sub region that I come from is called the West Nile sub region and it borders the Democratic Republic of Congo. I grew up in an extended family. We were 12 siblings in one household. And one of the things I remember was that even as we grew up, we got to appreciate the fact that it’s important to stay in our community, but also to show love and respect for the people that we live with. So later on, when I was at university, I had this brilliant idea to start up an initiative called the “Nile Girls Forum”.
I graduated from the university in 2017 and by 2018 at the age of about 23, 24, I started up an organisation called the Nile Girls Forum. And the whole purpose of this Nile Girls Forum was to reach the most vulnerable girl at the grassroots level.
So we had different approaches on how we could reach to these girls. And the thematics we were looking at were basically leadership and governance, sexual reproductive health and rights, climate justice, economic development, and peace building. Because we believe that even as we reach out to girls and women across Uganda, they are diverse in nature. So it was about how we could be more intentional on how we do our programming and how we reach out to these communities. So currently the girls and young women that we work with are diverse and they come from refugee communities.
We also work with those that live in the urban slums, but also those with disabilities and those in hard-to-reach communities, for example, the fishing communities across Uganda. in that way, we looked at it that if we are to have a holistic approach in terms of our programming, then we’re able to develop aspirations, self-worth, but also look at women and girls taking up spaces to become competent leaders. And this vision continued to evolve. And currently we have a movement that we call the “Peer Pals Movement” of about 200 girls and young women across Uganda.
So these young women are trained and equipped with leadership skills so that they can be of influence in their communities. They can get to influence policies and programs that affect them, but also speak for them, not just as going, for example, to a community of young women with disabilities and speaking for the persons with disabilities, but giving them that power to own their voice, to use it to foster change within the communities that they represent, but also to elevate the voices of the other young women and the girls that cannot get into those spaces where they can influence so many decisions because for us, meaningful youth engagement is very key. We’re looking at a Uganda or a continent or even a world where the people, especially the young people, are part of these processes from the grassroots level.
So that even as our policies are being passed, our programs are being designed, do they reflect the needs of the people that would be impacted? Yes, so that is just a little bit about some of the things that we do, but I’ll be very excited to share more as we continue in that segment.
Mik Aidt:
How would you describe the difference between how men create policy and how your female leaders will be creating policy. What’s the main differences?
Peace Pimer Monica:
I believe the main difference is the fact that when women come on board to co-create solutions, they come with first-hand experience. For example, if we’re working on a policy on sexual reproductive health, especially around maternal health, they come from an informed point of view. They also come with lived experiences. So we believe that when we get women on the decision-making table, we are bringing a policy that caters for even that woman at the grassroots level, but not just making it a vague policy that doesn’t reflect the needs of the community. So we believe, and it has been proven, that when women take up leadership positions, nations change, achievements are met even much faster.
For example, in Uganda, currently we have many young women taking up leadership positions. And it is a bottom-up right from the district level, from the parish level that is the lowest in the community. We see women, for example, women counselors taking up lead, but within the peer pulse movement at Nile Girls Forum, we have a leadership structure that entails three positions, that is the president, the coordinator, and the secretary. And we have seen how communities that are being led and driven by women continue to thrive. So I believe if women are put at that same table or decision-making table with the men then you can be amazed at how much more change would even be factored in because men alone can’t create change. But when you add women onto that table, they even create change twice more.
Tony Gleeson:
Peace, in your work so far, has there been a particular group that you’re especially proud of or a particular?
Peace Pimer:
Yes, absolutely. I’m lost for choice because there quite many. And in the communities that we serve, think one of the young women that stood out for us was one that has been living with a disability for the time, I think, believe from the time she was born. And it amazed us because around that time, who are doing an advocacy campaign to ensure that we have disability-friendly maternal beds in the health facilities in that community. So this young girl took it upon herself, based on the knowledge that we had shared during our trainings and our campaigns, to actually reach out to the health authorities in her particular district and hold them accountable to ensure that disability friendly beds are being put in place. And you’d be amazed that last year in 2023, in one of our project close-out meetings, we’re having a discussion with a district health officer that is in charge of the health department in the district. And they actually made a commitment based on this advocacy campaign that was led by the young women with disabilities to actually make sure that disability friendly beds would be rolled out this financial year by the government.
Such stories like that really inspire us and keep us going. But also the other one that really stands out for me, when I started Nile Girls Forum in 2018, basically I did not have any experience. I was just fresh out of the university doing a totally different course at the university. And when I got this passion to start up this initiative, I remember my first field visit was at a secondary school. And in this school, the girls were, it’s an entirely single-sex school, so it’s only for girls. And one of the girls in her final year was among those that I was talking to give career guidance, but also give them some materials to use for their examinations.
So what happened is that she came to me after the session and expressed interest and told me, I would really want to be part of the Nile Girls Forum, part of the peer-pals movement that you’re talking about. So I’m like, yeah, surE, you can reach out to me once you’ve broken off from school and you’re in your holidays. So she reached out to me and she said, yes, she would really love to walk this journey.
And from 2018, she was actually the first girl that we ever worked with and reached out to the community. Currently she works with us as the monitoring and evaluation officer at Nile Girls Forum. And she’s still driving change and standing true to the great things every other young woman and girl deserves in her community. So for me, that is really one of the things and stories of the young women that we work with that keeps us going and inspires us each and every day.
Mik Aidt:
Has Uganda been hit by the changing climate the way we see so many other places around the world being hit by either flooding or droughts?
Pimer Peace Monica:
Yes, Uganda has not been left out, and because of, and now that people are getting to know more about climate change, you know, for a very long time, for example, in my context, in the small community that I come from, climate change was for a very long time not addressed as a key thing. And it’s just…of recent that people seeing changes in weather patterns and then they’re like, so this is the climate change that we’re talking about. Farmers seeing seasons change and they cannot have a certain time that they’re crops that have been planted, but also people getting displaced because of floods. So it’s evident that Uganda equally is going through climate change, just like any other country across the world.
The great news about it is that there are very many youth initiatives that are coming up to champion climate justice. And we’re very excited that Nile Girls Forum is one of those that is championing this, so you still see that even when people at a point did not appreciate that it’s high time climate change conversation needed to get into the grassroots level, but also get into those policy rooms where policies are being passed.
It’s now that we appreciate that you don’t even need to explain yourself so much to talk about climate change. We appreciate the fact that government is now embracing interventions, but also, like I mentioned, young people are creating innovations around climate friendly products, but also taking up positions to hold leaders accountable. Not just the leaders, but also the initiatives that they do within their homes. For example, just separating the plastics and also getting to recycle them. So conversations around climate change and climate justice is something that is absolutely taking shape in Uganda.
Mik Aidt:
How would you explain the concept of climate justice to our listeners in Australia?
Pimer Peace Monica:
Climate justice is one thing for the listeners to really know is that when climate change, for example, happens and we have all these effects like the floods that we see, displacement, and like I mentioned, farmers are getting affected while they’re losing their produce. We look at climate justice in a way that it affects people differently and in order for us to achieve climate justice we need to reach out to those that are the most vulnerable when climate change strikes.
For example, I’ll just give you a case in point if we had a disaster or floods right now, who are those that you believe would be even most affected? If you look at a person with a disability, how would they navigate? If I could find a way of rescuing myself faster, how about a person with a disability, for example, a physical disability, how would they even get out of there?
But also, when climate change happens, for example, there are mudslides, what happens the woman, and you know as women we bear the burden of let me say going through a pregnancy. Imagine you’re pregnant and there are mudslides and you have to get out of that community. How best can you even get yourself out of there? But also when you look at the health systems, for example the health facilities that are around us, when a wildfire for example happens in the community and the health facilities are burned down. That means that you cannot access a health service, you cannot have safe delivery. So how does that impact? So for us to achieve climate justice, it means that we need to, as we design solutions, look at those that are highly affected when it comes to a disaster happening. Yes, so thank you. I hope that gives a little bit of more clarity of what climate justice would look like.
Tony Gleeson:
The work that you’re doing in working with marginalised groups is probably some of the most difficult work there is to do. What keeps you going in that work?
Pimer Peace Monica:
What really keeps me going is one, the passion. know, when you love something, you do it wholeheartedly. So every single time, when I see a life being transformed, a refugee getting their identity, it keeps me happy because I know what it means because we work with these communities. Sometimes it’s easy for you to read the statistics and say maybe one in four girls get pregnant every day under the age of 18. But it’s different when you go to the community and you actually see that happening.
But also the things that really kept me going is the fact that even when we reach out to these communities, one or two of them comes back to us and appreciates and says, if it were not because you rescued me at this point in my life, I wouldn’t be here. what really keeps driving me is the fact that if I gave up today, a thousand of lives are getting lost. Millions of lives are getting lost because if I keep going, the next day I have an initiative, I’ve reached out to a thousand girls or 500 women. What happens even after that is that if someone had made a decision to take away their life, they would say, if peace can do it, if she could go through all the hurdles to have this organisation up and running, how about me? I can still do it. it is those moments you have changed the life and someone is forever grateful. It just keeps me saying, if I could do better, then we’d have a community that is full of love and compassion. Yes, we can do with that. We certainly can.
Mik Aidt:
Now, can you give us a bit of an idea of how or what the structure of the Nile Girls Forum looks like?
Pimer Peace Monica:
The Nile Girls Forum, from the time I started in 2018… We really didn’t have lots of resources to have the structures put. But one of the things is that we kept on learning on job and adjusting. And I think that’s the beauty about work. It doesn’t matter what kind of work you do. If you’re an open-minded person and willing to learn and willing to take risks, then you definitely thrive.
So currently, we’re now in the sixth year of Nile Girls Forum. We have a board of directors that really helps to give us strategic directions and help keep us in check in line with our vision and our mission. And then of course, I do sit on that board as the secretary to the board. And we also have a full-time staff that basically helps do the day-to-day running of our different projects. So we have from programs department to monitoring and evaluation to finance to procurement to communications and advocacy, but we also have interns because one of the things that really inspired me to also start up the organisation is the fact that in Uganda getting internship placement is quite a sport.
So for me, it was how meaningfully can we engage the young students that are looking for internship placements? So we also have the internships that happen twice a year, as much as you also have the volunteers, but you also have the peer pals movement that I shared about. So that peer pals movement, in a way that we don’t just want to go to the community and train these girls and equip them with leadership skills, but you also want to link them to opportunities where they can exercise what they have learned in the different trainings.
So some of the interns that are currently at Nile Girls Forum are actually the young women and girls from the peer pals movement. And we have an office in Kampala, Uganda that is the capital city of Uganda, but we also have a field office in a district in the northern part of Uganda called Zombo District. So that is where we have our field operations and that is where most of the work is done because for that particular sub-region in northern Uganda, it hosts the largest number of refugees in Uganda at the moment there was a point where it was actually the largest in the world.
So that is why we keep that intention. But also, even as we are reaching out to these girls, we also have the skilling aspect. So we have a stall in one of the hotels in Kampala, Fairway Hotel, where we sell the products that are made by these girls in the communities. If you have opportunity to come to Kampala, Uganda, you can definitely go to the Fairway Hotel Kampala and find amazing, beautiful products that you can also as well find on our website, www.nilegirlsforum.org.
Oliver De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights:
My report to the Human Rights Council asks governments to question the way we’ve been eradicating poverty until now or trying to do so. The classic approach to combating poverty has been to grow the economy first and then tax corporations and high-value individuals in order to redistribute the wealth through the financing of public services and social protection. However, we are now crossing planetary boundaries.
This way of conceiving of the fight against poverty has enormous environmental impacts and the economy is not benefiting the poorest amongst the poor. It is not inclusive enough. So we need to rethink the way we combat poverty and we need to do so reducing our ecological footprint. We therefore need to focus our efforts on realising human rights rather than on growing the GDP, increasing the monetary wealth.
My report makes a number of recommendations as to how to move beyond increase of GDP as a focus of the economy, beyond the ideology of ‘growthism’ to focus on what really counts, well-being and the realisation of human rights.
Greenpeace: ‘Moneytrees’ (34:22)
And the smoke clears I see red skies
Yeah I’m done here, let the rain flow
Suitcase, heavy heavy, milk and honey
Runny runny runny runny, goodbye let’s go
I’m flying home, flying
There’s something I need you to know
No more money trees
Sorry, sorry
Not sorry, I need them all
Sorry Yeah Can’t do nothing
Sorry Money trees Money money money trees
Too long money money money money money money
Money trees
Greenie Boy Logging out Peace
Money trees Money money money money trees
Money trees, money money money trees
Money money money money
Bill McKibben: ‘How we got here and what we can do now’ (35:22)
Climate change is unique among our political problems in that it comes with these really tough time limits. We’re kind of used to problems that exist forever and we make incremental progress on them. As long as I’ve been alive, America’s been debating whether or not to have national health care like every other industrialised country. I imagine someday that we’ll eventually do it and I hope it’s soon because people die and go bankrupt every year when we don’t. But the fact that we’ve delayed doesn’t make it harder to solve the problem when we eventually get there.
Climate change isn’t like that. Climate change is this series of ratchets that work one way. Once you’ve melted the Arctic, no one has a plan for how you freeze it back up again. No one can set a kind of exact drop-dead date for planet Earth, you know, when climate change will just overwhelm us. We’ve already raised the temperature of the Earth pretty near a degree and a half Celsius, which is causing extraordinary problems. The North and South Poles are melting. The hydrological cycle, the way that water moves around the planet is completely disrupted. So we have way more flood and way more drought. That’s going to get worse at two degrees Celsius and worse again at three degrees.
Compromise is a very useful thing in a democratic society. That’s how most of our problems are solved. You think that there should be no minimum wage because you’re a libertarian. I think the minimum wage should be 30 bucks an hour because that’s what it takes to live. We meet in the middle at 15 bucks and we come back in a few years to argue it out again.
That’s not how climate change works. The negotiation that’s going on here isn’t between Democrats and Republicans or environmentalists and industrialists. The deepest negotiation is between human beings and physics. And physics is a very poor negotiator. It’s just going to do what it’s going to do, so our job is to meet the bar that it sets. Young people are providing most of the leadership in the climate fight, and thank God. There’s millions of them engaged in this. You know, we know about Greta Thunberg, and we should. She’s remarkable. What fun it was to send a letter of congratulations this year on her graduation from high school.
Think about that a minute. But you know what? I heard too many people my age say, ‘It’s up to the next generation to solve this.’ That’s a rotten thing to say, and it’s also an impractical one. Young people, for all their energy and intelligence and idealism, lack the structural power to make the change we need on the scale that we required in the time that we have. If you have hair coming out your ears, then you’re likely to have structural power coming out of your ears too. Those of us over 60, there’s 70 million of us in this country, we all vote, and we ended up with most of the money too. We got about 70 per cent of the country’s financial assets. So if you wanted to take on Washington or Wall Street, it’s good to have some people with hairlines like mine backing up those young people.
Those of us in our 60s and 70s and 80s now, in our first act, we were around for the greatest moment of social and cultural and political transformation ever.
Maybe in our second act, we were a little more interested in consumerism than in citizenship, but that’s water under the bridge.
Now in our third act, we have time, resources, skills, and a sense of legacy, of the world we’re leaving behind.
Legacy seems like an abstract word until you reach a certain age, and then you understand that legacy means the world you leave behind for the people you love the most.
My name is Bill McKibben and this has been my Brief But Spectacular take on what we can do together.
Mik Aidt:
Peace, what would the world look like if it was up to you and your organisation? What’s the vision that you have ahead of you?
Pimer Peace Monica:
One of the things that I really, really look forward to if I had all the resources is to make sure that there is a hub, a youth hub and skilling hub, which also offers a safe space in every corner of this world in every city across the world because we’ve reached a time where the world really needs healing, needs love. And it’s every day when you walk around the streets, not just in Africa, but in Europe on any other continent, you see people that are hungry for, to just have a sense of belonging, to have that identity.
If we really had the resources, I would have Nile girls having a corner in every part, every city, in every nation across the world. So that this peer pulse movement that we currently have that is only in Uganda at the moment, one of the things we see is that even after five years or even the next year, we have this peer pulse movement across the world where it’s borderless because we cannot just say, let’s this small community, but we believe if we come across the world together and join hands then all of us can meet each one of us at different points of need and we have that ability to do that. How do you sustain your group financially? We get, where does the money come to do that?
Tony Gleeson:
So I imagine there’s paid, you said before there’s paid staff. Do you, we’re firm believers in the importance people all over the world connecting. You spoke about the value of that too. Do you have any of those connections already?
Pimer Pece Monica:
Yes, sure. And for me, one of the things I really value the most is social capital, knowing people and working with people. So currently we have funding for about for two projects that are running. But also just to for the benefit of some of the listeners is that all these things take a process because there was a time we spent four years before we even received our first funding. From 2018 to 2022, we’re basically a voluntary organisation. So even the people that were working then who are still actually working with us were volunteers full time.
So we got two grants and these two grants, thankfully, they were able to support the staff salary with also running the day-to-day operations of the office. But also one thing I, as the vision bearer, looked at is that, you know, when you have grants, these are seasonal and the grants that we have are actually restricted grants.
So what happens when the term of the grant expires? That’s when we came up with that skilling component that we would make a product that are climate friendly, but also beautiful that we could sell to the communities. then the proceeds, a percentage goes back to this community of girls, but also a percentage goes back to the operations of the organisation.
60 per cent goes back to the girls, but also the 40 per cent comes back to the organisation to make sure that it’s being sustained and then it’s not being whereby you make a product and that’s it and you don’t have money to buy materials to keep the produce running. So yes, 40 per cent back to the organisation and the 60 per cent back to the communities that we serve.
And what is the product? So we have a different range of products. We have handbags that are beaded. We also have dough mats. We have liquid soap. And we also have what we would call their baskets that are woven. And all these products are handmade. And the other product that we also currently make are the reusable sanitary pads.
Tony Gleeson:
The grants, are they from international bodies or your government? Where are they coming from?
Pimer Peace Monica:
The current grants that we have running are from international organisations. We have one that is from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the other grant is from the Embassy of France in Uganda. One of the things that we really invest in so much is our social media and especially our social media engagement. We usually get calls for proposals and we do lots of grant writings. And so these two particular grants, we got them through an application process that we had to go through. And for those that have written grants, you know it’s not easy because we have written quite many before. So we only had those two that were really successful. And so it’s a whole process that we have to go through phase one, phase two and phase three. And yes, and that we are, we were able to implement the projects.
Tony Gleeson:
The international connections that you’ve been able to form over the six, seven years since you’ve existed. If you can chat a little bit about the international connections that you’ve made?
Pimer Peace Monica:
Still through the social media engagements that I leverage on so much, especially LinkedIn and X, that is formerly Twitter, plus Facebook. I always share the work that we do both on my personal page, but also our communications team makes sure that they publish the work that we do on our social media sites.
And most of these international connections have really come through social media. And that just shows you the importance of leveraging the use of technology in the work that we do, because then it helps us to connect even when we cannot see each other. We can still pour into each other’s cups even when we’re not close. So among the different things that I’ve been able to do last year, I participated as a panelist for the Rewired Summit, which was hosted by VVOB, Education for Development, an organisation that is headquartered in Belgium.
It was really a great opportunity for me to be in this panel discussion that was talking about the transformative power of education, especially in addressing climate change, that just gives that platform and the opportunity for the communities that I work with to also have their voices reflected, but also it gives us the opportunity for the world to know more about what we do and the ability of young people to actually be in these spaces. It was a very humbling experience because then I was on that panel, a high level panel with a minister from Sierra Leone in Africa, but also a global award winner teacher from Belgium. And for me to just share and also leverage those connections helped, for example, reach out even more opportunities and improve the work that we’re doing back home.
The other connections that I’ve been able to make in international spaces. I participated in a youth workshop that was led by the UN Office of the High Commission on Human Rights and the African Union. So it was basically building the capacity of youth advocates in the East and the Horn of Africa on peace building processes, but also countering hate speech.
And these platforms really gave me also the opportunity to better program our work. And through some of these engagements, for example, on the peace and security, we’re able to incorporate our work, for example, on youth peace and security. And currently we have under the peer pals movement, what we call the peers for peace, because we also strongly believe that even.
We address, for example, we have climate solutions or interventions on sexual reproductive health or economic development of young people. If there is no peace, then all these things cannot actually be effectively done. So they’ve also given this platform. So through those engagements, we had a number of meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, that is also an East African nation with Uganda.
It was just amazing to share with the different young people. But also amazingly, this year I am also writing a policy insight through an organisation that is based in Geneva. They reached out to me to come up with a policy insight on meaningful youth engagement, especially at United Nations and local governance processes. So it’s something that I’m definitely looking out to because it will then be rolled out during the UN Summit of the Future in New York.
I will definitely share that with you as well. It will be in a blog. it just really, these connections help to look at the different work they’re doing because all this work that we are doing, doesn’t only affect, for example, particular race. It cuts across and we’re all humans and that is what is most important that even as we do our work, we do it in a way that is borderless because we can have Africa as a continent, but I mean, those are just borderlines that are created, but more to that we are human beings that can connect and can make a world that is free and just for everyone to live in.
Tony Gleeson:
It’s so pleasing, so heartwarming to hear people like Peace talk with such determination, with such enthusiasm about the work she’s doing. The fact that she’s working, she’s chosen to work with marginalised groups, which I’m sure there’s been many barriers that she’s had to overcome in doing that, but she’s not daunted by that at all and in fact determined to go well, well, to expand that operation where marginalised women are empowered to become part of the solution in all sorts of ways. And the incredible changes that she described today in the women that she’s the young women, in particular that she’s worked with is just truly heartwarming.
There’s no real reason that women should be marginalised, is there? No. They should be central to everything. Yeah. In particular in decision making, you know, that we see so many mistakes that have been made by greedy men. Yeah. And in her particular case, it’s the marginalised, it’s not necessarily that they’re women, but they are women and they also have got impediments to
Maybe their poverty is, she’s helping them overcome that. Any sort of disability as well. So she’s chosen the most marginalised people in her country to work with and has a very, very powerful message for all of us. I’m sure there are groups in other countries that are working on similar things. So let’s hope that they get together, network and make all of their jobs easier.
Mik Aidt:
And good to hear that she’s taking it now to the United Nations and we’ll report here in the sustainable hour about what happens next in her journey.
That’s all folks we could fit in this particular sustainable hour. Next week I’ll be in Denmark. So that’ll be interesting to do a truly international Sustainable Hour. But for now, all we can say as usual is go out there and be the difference. Be yourself.
SONG:
Jack Johnson: ‘Better Together’
There’s no combination of words I could put on the back of a postcard
No song that I could sing, but I can try for your heart
Our dreams and they are made out of real things
Like a shoebox of photographs with sepia tone loving
Love is the answer released for most of the questions in my heart
Why we’re here and where do we go and how come it’s so hard
It’s not always easy and sometimes life can be deceiving
I’ll tell you one thing, it’s always better when we’re together
It’s always better when we’re together
Yeah, we’ll look at the stars when we’re together
Well, it’s always better when we’re together
Yeah, it’s always better when we’re together
All of these moments just might find their way into my dreams tonight
But I know that they’ll be gone when the morning light sings or brings new things
For tomorrow night you see that they’ll be gone too
Too many things I have to do
But if all of these dreams might find their way into my day to day scene
I’d be under the impression
I was somewhere in between with only two just me and you
Not so many things we got to do
Or places we got to be
We’ll sit beneath the mango tree now
Yeah, it’s always better when we’re together
Mmm, we’re somewhere in between together
Well, it’s always better when we’re together
Yeah, it’s always better when we’re together
They look so, so pretty when I sleep, ain’t I when?
And when I wake up, you look so pretty sleeping next to me
But there is not enough time, there is no, no song I could sing
And there is combination of words I could say
but I will still tell you one thing, we’re better together
Greta Thunberg speech used in a Parents for Future India promotion video:
You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. You say you love your children above all else. And yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess. Even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake.
Many people say that doesn’t matter what we do. But I’ve learned that you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to. But to do that we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis.
And the solutions within this system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself. Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. The year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you.
Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything, while there still was time to act. We have not come here to beg you to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. You have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not.
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Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
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