http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN22250474.html
Jane Goodall passes activist torch to world's youth
Tue 22 Apr 2008, 17:57 GMT
By Barbara Liston
ORLANDO, Fla., April 22 (Reuters) - Renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, 74,
symbolically passed the torch on Tuesday to a new generation of hand-picked
environmental and peace activists whom she gathered this week for the first
Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit.
"The 100 (young people) who are here represent hundreds of thousands of
others," Goodall said on the 38th annual Earth Day. "You hear them debate
some of the problems of the world, and you know there is hope for the future."
Goodall, who rose to fame in the 1960s through her ground-breaking study of
chimpanzees in East Africa, now spends 300 days a year on the road using her
personal story and rock star status among young people to inspire them to act
on critical issues in their communities.
She said her goal has been to build a critical mass of young activists to
carry on her life's work for a more humane world, acting through youth
organizations such as her own Roots & Shoots which started on her front porch
in Tanzania in 1991.
"I was determined not to die until Roots & Shoots could survive. Now I know
it will. It's got its own life without me," Goodall said.
The 100 young people at the summit in Orlando, Florida, came from 28
countries, and all were selected personally by Goodall based on their work in
their communities.
Among them, Chih-Chung Lin, 21, advocates for the use of reusable chopsticks
by restaurants in Taiwan where around 2.8 million disposable wooden utensils
are discarded each day.
Another, Weldon Korir, 23, founded a youth group in Kenya for HIV and malaria
prevention. And Manoj Gautam, 22, runs what he calls a restaurant for
vultures in a pasture in Nepal where birds, who have been dying in large
numbers from tainted food, can feed on clean carcasses.
Karoline McMullen, 17, of the United States, who published a textbook on the
threatened native Ohio brook trout, said she had been inspired by listening
to the stories and seeing the determination of her peers from around the
world.
"It makes me hopeful for what I can do and reassures me that it's possible do
what seems impossible," she said.
Speaking at the summit, Henri Landwirth, 81, a Holocaust survivor and
longtime philanthropist behind such foundations as Give Kids the World,
reminded the young people that his work and the work of his generation was
nearly over.
"I am one of a dying generation. You youth have to do it," he said. (Editing
by Michael Christie and Sandra Maler)
------
XD 我剛剛才看到竟然有講到我
談台灣每天用掉280萬支免洗筷的事
不過我當時用字沒這麼高級...
--
「唯有了解,才會關心;唯有關心,才會行動;唯有行動,生命才有 希望 」
~~珍古德(Jane Goodall)
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 163.20.252.234