“I never saw myself as a conservationist or an activist, or any of those things really,” confesses Lou Ruddell, founder of shark conservation group Fin Fighters. Despite her passion for sharks, she never wanted to emulate other conservation organisations. “It’s all about inspiring positivity and working with people in a way that is fun. And I think that’s where conservation has kind of been stalling for a really long time, because it’s not been about inspiring people to do something.”

Focused on collaboration, action-oriented and positive, Ruddell, 31, is characteristic of the new breed of young marine conservation activists who are breaking with tradition and pioneering fresh approaches to ocean protection.

The history of marine conservation is a relatively short one. While fisheries have been managed internationally for several centuries, the historical driver for this regulation was to sustain commercial fish stocks. If there were any benefits to wider ocean biodiversity, that was purely incidental.

Only in the 1970s, with the birth of the modern environmental movement, did marine conservation emerge as a discipline in its own right. This new branch of conservation science took a more holistic view of marine biodiversity, allowing room for interdisciplinary approaches to the multi-faceted problems affecting the oceans. But marine conservation has remained relatively unchanged since, with the majority of its practitioners still biological scientists and much of the funding still grant-based.

“My hope is for marine conservation to be part of our culture and for us to understand that everything is connected.”

Now, the tide is turning. The millennial generation, born between 1980 and 2000, have arrived, and they’re enthusiastic about changing the planet for the better. Strong traits in millennials have been shown to include independent-mindedness, innovative thinking, adaptability and being motivated by purpose. In the marine world, this is perhaps no better personified than by Boyan Slat, the 19-year-old Dutch student who invented The Ocean Cleanup, a device that extracts plastic pollution from the ocean. In 2014, Slat was crowned one of the Champions of the Earth, the UN’s highest environmental accolade.

But is the marine conservation world ready to embrace these young change-makers?

In early 2014, 21-year-old student Daniela Fernandez was asked to represent Georgetown University at a meeting of the UN, where she heard a speech about the state of the oceans. Alarmed not only by the severity of the crisis but also by her lack of awareness, Fernandez took a look at the rest of the audience. “As I looked around the room, I was one of the only students or young people. Which was a huge problem, because I felt like my generation was not getting this information [about the ocean]. The information, the facts, the statistics, were all being preached to the same group of people,” she says.

This experience prompted Fernandez to set up the Georgetown Sustainable Oceans Alliance (SOA). In April this year the group hosted a summit that attracted not only some very experienced high level speakers, but also over 1,000 young people from across the US. Many of the attendees have subsequently formed chapters of the SOA at their own universities. For Fernandez, this success was a validation of her concerns: “All along, it wasn’t because millennials weren’t interested in the problem, or that they don’t care, it’s because they don’t have the opportunity to be involved,” she says.

Mariasole Bianco, 30, is co-chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas Young Professionals Marine Taskforce. She believes that young people are often overlooked, which leads to them developing new approaches: “There is just one door closing after the other. But this also has a positive result, because from this frustration, and the fact that we can’t find a place in the conservation community, many people start their own organisations to make a difference in their communities.”

Skipper and ocean advocate Emily Penn, 28, agrees that this self-starter approach is vital, but that it “traditionally doesn’t necessarily exist in ocean conservation”. Despite a list of achievements that would put many older environmentalists to shame, she counts developing the conservation sailing organisation Pangea Explorations into a financially sustainable entity as probably the biggest accomplishment of her career.

As for what else separates millennials from previous generations, Penn cites access to technology and opportunity: “The world we live in now is so different from our parents’ generation and our ability to connect and communicate with one another, and the power that this gives us…is hugely significant,” she says.

Communication skills have been key to the success of non-profit campaigning organisation Save Philippine Seas, according to co-founder and ‘chief Mermaid’ Anna Oposa, 27. Trained as a musical theatre performer, she believes that her background has given her an advantage: “When you’re a scientist you’re taught to do things a certain way. But for me, I have been using my heart. I’m not scared to fail I guess, and I’m not scared of rejection,” she says.

In common with other young ocean activists, Oposa is motivated by a desire to see everyone engaged with marine conservation: “My hope is for marine conservation not to be extraordinary, and for it to be part of our culture, and for us to understand that everything is connected,” she says.

“Even if you live in the city, even if you live in a very urban jungle, it doesn’t mean that you’re not part of the sea.”

This spirit of collective endeavour is how many young people believe conservation groups should be working, as Ruddell explains: “The future of conservation is about smaller groups, working collectively and together. Because you’ve got more strength that way,” she says.

As for the future of the seas themselves, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the threats that our oceans are facing. But many young marine conservationists are optimistic about what they can achieve. For Penn, the huge challenges that her generation faces are also the source of her motivation.

“We’re so lucky,” she says. “We get to solve the biggest problem, we get to change the world. We get to make the biggest difference that our species has ever had the opportunity to make.”

The post Meet the young ocean advocates aiming to change marine conservation for the better appeared first on Positive News.

The hand-painted signs on the roads up to main Kilimanjaro gate vie for space: endless orphanages and baby homes, the words in English, not the native Swahili which we speak here in Tanzania. There’s something unnerving about the sheer number of homes clustered together on the main tourist routes.

In Arusha, Tanzania’s climbing centre for Kilimanjaro, the local supermarket heaves with fresh-faced individuals. The checkouts reverberate with Swedish, American, English and Spanish chatter. They’re volunteers, and whether there is in increase in people wanting to help others in today’s globalised society, or whether the economic recession in North America and Europe or a desire for an enhanced CV is to blame, Africa has never seen so many.

According to the Red Cross, it has 13.1 million volunteers globally, all performing vital work such as vaccinating over two million people against polio in Rwanda in 2010. A European study in 2006 said that an impressive 80% of Europeans have volunteered at some point in their lives, although only 2% of these took the plunge to volunteer internationally.

Undoubtedly there is much good to be done when volunteering abroad, as the Red Cross literature states: “Voluntary service is at the heart of community-building. It encourages people to be responsible citizens and provides them with an environment where they can be engaged and make a difference. It enhances social solidarity, social capital and quality of life in a society.”

“Simply ‘wanting to help’ was not enough. Volunteering, gap years and ‘voluntourism’ is big business, but it’s also very complicated”

Organisations such as Voluntary Service Overseas – which has over 50 years’ experience in advising people how to volunteer well and symbiotically – work closely with local partners on projects that are targeted and clear. For example, a crab farming project in Zanzibar is an endearingly simple idea: Muslim women with many existing responsibilities (children, cleaning, growing vegetables) are taught fast and cheap ways to fatten up their crabs, and supported to make new relationships with hotel owners and earn more money.

As chairwoman Saada Juma explains: “Our aim is to bring more wealth to our village, to eradicate poverty here.” The role of the Kenyan volunteer Maurice Kwame is to network on their behalf, and teach marketing and budgeting skills to the women.

Are good intentions enough?

When I began my volunteering adventure when I was 18 – in a pre-mobile phone and pre-Facebook world – the experience proved a mixed bag. Based in India, it was six months of delirious excitement, isolation, awe, introspection, confusion, enthusiasm and, ultimately, a burning desire to find out more about the world, about global inequality, the legacies of colonialism and development.

However, in retrospect, it would have helped to have been more aware of the issues and pitfalls of volunteering. Simply ‘wanting to help’ was not enough. Volunteering, gap years and ‘voluntourism’ is big business, but it’s also very complicated.

In 2010, a study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) concluded that Aids orphans were becoming commodities. Firstly, many of the so-called orphans surveyed in Southern Africa were not technically, or legally, orphans. Secondly, the paying volunteers from the global north are usurping qualified and keen local workers who, understandably, cannot afford to work for free let alone actually pay to help. Thirdly, as prominent child psychologists Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby have indicated in their respective papers, The Family and Independent Development and The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds, consistent emotional bonds for children from birth to early teens are key to their emotional stability and development of life skills. People coming in and out of a child’s life at an early stage are detrimental to their long-term ability to form emotional bonds.

“Do your research, have a viable and good reason for volunteering. Be honest about how much you can commit” – Diving centre manager Isobel Pring

To put it bluntly, according to the research it’s unlikely a school leaver volunteering abroad for a few months actually does any long-term good to an orphaned baby or child.

In Tanzania, like many developing countries, there’s an added complication: while it’s legally necessary to register any NGO here, no standards of child protection are enforced, there’s no obligatory worker training, and certainly no police checks for staff or visitors, occasional or not. There is no register of child abusers or sex offenders here. All these things are non-negotiable in Europe and North America where many orphanages are private affairs, whose ‘success’ (both psychological and actual, in terms of finding homes for children) is entirely dependent on the goodwill, integrity and skill of their management team and staff.

Here in sub-Saharan Africa, many NGOs are, according to the Institute of Social Studies’ report Politics of the Queue: the Politicisation of People Living with HIV and Aids, little more than “vanity projects or suitcase NGOs,” overseen and run by people with spare time and cash, but no training whatsoever.

Yet there are many ways to volunteer productively. Farasi Safari Tanzania is a project managed and run by former street children just outside Moshi in Tanzania. In a typical Swahili ‘shamba’ (a compound with houses made of soil and clay) and with limited electricity, they offer authentic treks into the foothills of Kilimanjaro on ‘happy horses’ – horses that are cared for, well-fed and loved. The atmosphere is relaxed, and the lush vegetation and the mountain scenery make for an intense experience.

Former street child Eric, who works for the project, has mixed feelings about the volunteering situation: “We do like people who are not tired out by practical things, who are open to us and curious about who we are. People who come with a desire to help, but have their own personal problems to solve or who feel sorry for us, are not so good really. People who speak Swahili are a real advantage!”

Over a thousand miles south in Mtwara on the border near Mozambique, diving centre manager Isobel Pring is more direct: “Don’t rock up here expecting a job for two weeks or a free dive course. What I need is people who come with a clear plan, say reef monitoring or specific marine research, and a well thought-through proposal of what they can offer.”

“Resilience and common sense count for a huge amount,” she continues. “We flush the loo with buckets of water, it’s very hot, and you should anticipate getting sick: medical facilities are limited and far away.”

Isobel is also sceptical of some of the larger organisations (she won’t name them) that “push people through like a sausage factory, in the third world experience.”

“Voluntary service encourages people to be responsible citizens and provides them with an environment where they can be engaged and make a difference”

She cautions: “Do your research, have a viable and good reason for volunteering. Be honest about how much you can commit. Be very clear that you understand what the organisation wants from you, and what you can offer.”

Elizabeth Mosha, director of Women in Action, a Tanzanian NGO that supports women in matters of education, domestic abuse and sexual health, endorses this. “We welcome volunteers who really know this sector, and have worked in it already. We have one computer, thousands of clients who use our services, and our internet is expensive and unreliable. In the rainy season it’s muddy and difficult. We need ‘can do’ people who find ways around these problems. And it’s really essential they are emotionally strong and stable.”

The reality of volunteering is a harder one than many gap year organisations would have their audience believe, but those up to the task will reap tremendous rewards. At 68, Elizabeth looks like a woman in her thirties. Smiling, she says: “What is so surprising and wonderful for me is how much this changes people. They don’t want to leave. Often our volunteers return, more educated and with more knowledge, more skills, really committed to helping us change and develop.”

The post Lending a helpful – not hindering – hand as a global volunteer appeared first on Positive News.