Climate Action Figures

Season 2, Episode 25: Pooja

• John Whidden • Season 2 • Episode 25

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In this episode of Climate Action Figures, host John Whidden introduces Pooja, the founder of Youth Climate Collaborative. They discuss youth-led climate initiatives, the importance of conscious consumerism, and Pooja’s journey in climate advocacy, accompanied by tips on preventing burnout while making a significant impact

00:00 Introduction to Climate Action Figures

01:00 This Week's QuickFix: Voting with Your Wallet

02:26 Meet Pooja: Founder of Youth Climate Collaborative

04:07 Open Doors Initiative: Connecting Youth to Opportunities

07:12 Jaali: A Digital Social Impact Platform

11:01 Balancing Passion and Personal Life

16:16 Pooja's Journey and Inspirations

23:57 Final Thoughts and Climate Action Tips

26:03 Conclusion and Next Week's Preview

https://www.youthcc.org/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pooja-tilvawala/?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

climateactionfigures@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/climateactionfigures
https://www.instagram.com/climateactionfigures/
https://www.youtube.com/@ClimateActionFigures

Pooja:

Hi, I'm Pooja, and you're tuned into Climate Action Figures.

John:

Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Climate Action Figures. My name as always is John Whidden, and this week on the show you get to meet Pooja. And before we even get to this week's QuickFix, we have had some new listeners and viewers join us recently and asked what we are all about. So here's the 15 second version. Climate Action Figures is a place for young people to share little and big things they are doing to mitigate climate change. And at its heart, it's really a place where young and old can find hope in each other's small and large actions. if you're new, welcome, I. Each week we feature a shareable action from an audience member that we call a QuickFix. And this week's QuickFix is a beauty from Roger in Calgary. Roger says Voting once every four years is not enough. I. We also vote every time we spend or invest a dollar. When we give money to a company, we are saying to them, keep up the good work. Whatever they did to make that product and bring it to you, your money says you approve of that. So we can be careful about who we give our money to. We can also write to that company that's not quite up to snuff and say, I like your product because of X or Y, but you need to get carbon out of your supply chains, or you need to do more to respect human rights, or you need to do more to protect biodiversity. thanks so much for that, Roger, and welcome Pooja.

Pooja:

Thank you So much.

John:

What do you think about that QuickFix?

Pooja:

I totally agree with our friend in Calgary and also think it's about. Who we accept money from as well. So we're gonna be receiving all sorts of donations to lead our projects and lead our work. And we get to choose who we accept it from and under what conditions. So there's also that way that we can hold companies nonprofits and others accountable.

John:

Very important points, last week on the program I mentioned that we don't accept any donations at Climate Action Figures because we wanna stay completely disconnected from sponsorship and donations. So we only accept free swag that we give away from time to time. Now, Pooja, you are founder and Executive Director of Youth Climate Collaborative, which creates pathways for youth in climate leadership. We're looking at your landing page right now, so nice job on that. Tell us more about that organization.

Pooja:

We're trying to help young people ages 35 and under by creating pathways to sustain their involvement in the climate movement and to advance their action. So what does this look like? We have several different programs. One of them is called Open Doors. In this initiative, we're matching youth with free tickets or affordable tickets, as well as free or affordable housing to attend events that may change their lives. It could lead to a job, it could lead to a funding opportunity or meeting friends that you'll have for the rest of your life. We've also got a program on climate mental health called Climate Courage, where we're helping young people build their emotional resilience ahead of time, as well as in response to climate change impacts to them and their communities. They're learning how to be there for themselves and for others. We've also got a few other initiatives where we're doing a lot of community building to connect people around the world with each other. We're providing technical support to youth in Kenya, India, and the UK to help advance their projects. And we're providing media training so that young people know how to write op-eds, pitch op-eds, be camera ready, and really use the power of their stories to influence change. There's more, but you can read more about us on the site.

John:

We will put the link to that in the show notes for sure. Let's go back to open doors for a second. How do people get connected to that? Or how do you find people?

Pooja:

for example, there's the conference change now, which is happening in Paris, and we reached out last year to see if we could have some speaking opportunities or at least a slot to host our session on intergenerational collaboration and decision making models. And they liked our work and provided us a free slot, which usually costs money, um, as a youth led group to discuss this very important topic of intergenerational decision making and making sure that youth also have a meaningful seat at the table. And in addition to that, they gave us 10 free tickets so our youth could be there and be part of the audience and help lead this event as well as. Take advantage of everything that was being offered at the conference. And that partnership from that one time has turned into a multi-year partnership where this year we were invited to help with their young parliamentarians initiative, which is super cool. They're bringing people from government, private sector, youth from different countries to provide their input to these decision makers. On policies and to help them shape their, their vision for how they're supporting the climate movement. we get to contribute speakers to it, audience members to it, and got 13 free tickets for our youth. And that's just one example. We've also worked with other organizations who have last minute cancellations of people that can't come to like New York Climate Week or, COP, which is the UNFCCCs big conference, and when they have these last minute housings that are canceled, we say, oh, we'll take it since it's non-refundable and give it to our youth. And so we've been able to use that as a strategy too for some free housing.

John:

congratulations on that, uh, continuing partnership and Pooja. If, if young people want to look peruse, can they check out your website to see, oh, what are some free seats that might have opened up or tickets that might be available, or do you always find the youth and connect them

Pooja:

No, everything is open call. We don't believe in gatekeeping or in, you know, uh, leaving things closed. So we share these opportunities in our WhatsApp groups and on LinkedIn and we hope to start adding them to the website as well as a way to promote.

John:

Are there other social media platforms that you find have been particularly helpful in, um, disseminating that information to young people?

Pooja:

Yeah, Instagram has been helpful using stories and reels. Uh, so has word of mouth, so we've been relying on our members to share with their friends and their friends and their friends a little bit old school.

John:

And Word of mouth. I was gonna say, I'm not familiar with that platform. Yes I am. Thought you were gonna explain some hip new social media platform to us

Pooja:

Old school.

John:

now. Pooja, you are also the founder and CEO of Jaali, a soon to launch digital social impact platform, which leverages AI to connect change makers of all ages with each other. And for those partaking on YouTube, we are now looking at an Indo- Islamic style lattice screen, which is actually what a jaali is. I thought you might be interested in sharing with us why that is the perfect image of what this. Organization is about.

Pooja:

so Jaali growing up is, uh, we always use it to refer to the screen behind the window. So it's that net screen. And, uh, you know, I visited the Taj Mahal and many other sites in India where they have these very intricate and beautiful lattice structures, which show an interconnected pattern and. Also, this is a window to opportunity. So thinking of it as both a window to opportunity, bringing people together and providing this platform for finding opportunities. And so that's why it's named that. And I wanted to pay homage to my culture as well.

John:

how will AI be used to connect people?

Pooja:

So we haven't incorporated the AI elements yet, but how we're planning to is one by having a chat bot. So let's say you are based in Calgary and you're looking for a$10,000 grant for your agriculture project, you can just ask the bot, can you help me find$10,000 grants for a youth that is 20 years old and based in Calgary? And then it would spit out options based on the data that's been put into the system. It's not gonna scrape data from the vast internet, but it will from all the submissions onto the Jaali platform. And, um, another way is to find collaborators. You could say, I'm looking for a full stack engineer for my application that's based in India. And then it would recommend for you, um, some people who share that profile.

John:

Great ways to connect people. Pooja, who are you most looking to connect? Who do you feel like really needs to be connected in the world these days?

Pooja:

So we have three main types of users. one is people who are looking for opportunities and ways to take action. So you can see a map of the different projects happening around you and reach out if you're interested in getting involved. Then there's organizations that have opportunities to share or looking for funding. They can share their impact metrics. They can share about any grant opportunities or events that they're hosting. Then there's also funders who Will have. the funders view, which is the impact metrics of each organization or project. And then they can choose to reach out to the organizers if they wanna learn more and potentially fund

John:

It sounds like a wonderful platform. If our listeners or viewers are interested in checking it out, when can they expect it to go live?

Pooja:

So we are gonna launch the second prototype with our community first around the end of April, early May. And after we get feedback and fix any little bugs, add a few additional features. We're hoping it's live for the general public, uh, sometime this summer, so maybe around July.

John:

Well, good luck with that. That's always a challenge to bring something like that to life, but it sounds like it'll be a, a very useful platform Pooja, you have co-organized hundreds of events across many cities. You are involved in innovative research, and I could go on and on. We just don't have enough time in the show to get all of that info on here. And I will put your LinkedIn link in the show notes as well so that people can check out the other things you're involved in. But how do you balance all of that stuff?

Pooja:

It is so difficult sometimes, honestly, as an adult, I've had to accept that you are going to have more interests than time. You'll not have enough time in the day to explore the many, many interests you have. I'm a very curious person. I'm always asking like, I wonder why that is, or I wonder how, and I'm always trying to learn new skills. Like the first prototype of Jaali, I made it with my friend, you know, using no code. And I do the website, I do a lot of the fundraising and project management, partnership development. But as one person you can only do so much and you have to learn. What are your skills? How do you want to spend your time? And you also have to learn to prioritize. So I'm at a point in my life right now where I've neglected personal things like dating, like, you know, fitness and watching my, um, lifestyle, getting enough sleep, and there comes a point where. You need to do a little trade or sacrifice some things for the things that you really want. So I had to really think about if this lifestyle was sustainable and accept the hard truth that it's not; as much as you'll want to keep, you know, doing all the exciting work and going to all the cool conferences. You have to draw a line and, and prioritize your health, some of the personal goals that you have, or else time will just go by so quickly and you'll look back and be like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm X Age and you know, I've, I just haven't given the time that this needs. And I really wanted to, you know, and so. To balance life. I've started really to ask myself, do I need to be involved in this? Do I even have the time to volunteer? Because as you build communities, so many people are gonna come up to you for, free advice and, even for help, that would be like a full-time role somewhere or a consulting role, right? You really gotta learn when to say no and focus on a few things, do them well, and add on. If you have time, and you can also let go of programs if you feel that you don't wanna focus on them anymore. Like for example, we're running our climate mental health program until the end of the year, maybe a few months into the new year, And then we're handing it off to a partner that we trust to take it over just so we can focus more on our other projects. And not because that's not important, but because. You have to know what your limits are and if you're able to do everything well, if you're continuing to do everything.

John:

continuing on that same thread, Pooja, what advice do you have for active young people so that they don't burn out when they're doing such important things?

Pooja:

Burnout is tough, right? Uh, I have burnt out. before, like I started a new organization in 2023 while running YCC, while trying to do the second prototype of Jaali, but then ended up just pausing Jaali and focusing on the other two because it was impossible to do the three. I really burnt out at the end of the year and had to take like a month or two to just like do nothing. Because of all the work that I had to do and many sleepless nights, especially at the end of 2023. from that, like you might start to like hate your life and that's the last thing you wanna do is hate the work that you really enjoyed doing initially when you had less to do. Because it becomes more of like crossing things off a to-do list because you need to get it done rather than you're doing it because you enjoy it and it's feeling good and you're feeling healthy at the same time. So my advice would be to start small, but to get started and add on as you go instead of starting with maybe 10 things and cutting back. And also to lean on. people for support, right? So we have this incredible community. Whenever we need help with something, I just write in the group Hey, is somebody free to create a reel about this? And somebody will just step up and volunteer to do it. So never forget to ask for help and lean on those around you, because more often than not, somebody's ready to help, but you just haven't made the ask.

John:

Right. People don't know until we say.

Pooja:

Yeah.

John:

Pooja, you're clearly inspired. What are the roots of that inspiration? Where did this, uh, interest in doing all these things come from?

Pooja:

when I was young, I remember learning about, uh, my great-grandfathers. So you know, the British had colonized India and. Taken over India, and at that time my grandfather's oldest brother was a freedom fighter in the peaceful tactics side. And he also has well, had an older brother who used a bit more violent tactics as well to fight against the British. And so it's always been. In my family to take action against the injustices that we see in the world and learning about their stories and seeing how they just took initiative. They learned what groups were being active, figured out the pathways that they wanted to take to take action, and knew that they did something. They did what they could, what was in their power to fight against the injustice was really inspiring to hear. I grew up watching like BBC news and stuff, and seeing how if you were born in one country versus another country, it really impacted the pathways you had to opportunity to succeed. And I really Don't like that injustice, and so I'm like, what can I do? As somebody with privilege, having been born in India, but then grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, how can I use the skills, the opportunities, the resources available to me to support my people at home and to support those who want a better quality of life but may not have the means to get there. And so I was just trying to wrap my head around how to do that. And I didn't know what I wanted to do until the very end of college. After having attended this climate summit in San Francisco and seeing the grassroots movement on the streets protesting against government indecision and big oil, and then being inside and. Learning about the collaborative initiatives that people were taking to address climate change and really seeing how I could play a role in that. So it was really inspiring just to see everyday people using their skills and their knowledge and anything that was available to them to achieve the results for the better future that they envisioned. And I was like, if they can do that with very little too, then I can do that too.

John:

So that came after your college training.

Pooja:

Yeah. It was like the last semester of my college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was like, I know I want to help improve the quality of life for people, but what did that look like as a career? I had no idea. And so

John:

Did you happen to be in a good program at college to lead you in that direction?

Pooja:

So I studied international studies, uh, with the focus on justice, ethics, human rights, and uh, also studied economics. And I spent one year abroad at London School of Economics where the education was very good but I also had a lot of like life learning to do while abroad. And then. At AU: American University in DC where I went. Yeah, the education, I, I liked some of the classes. Some of the classes were okay. But there were a lot of other opportunities where I got to learn, like they had a program where I got to go to Nicaragua and, uh, do some environmental education work and cultural exchange and learn about the impacts of climate change, poverty, et cetera, on deforestation there. And learn how people were trying to protect the rainforest and animals and communities living around it. Um, so there were different experiences like that that led me to wanting to work in the international climate space and just figuring out what a career would look like. I learned about the Meridian Institute Ruckel's House Fellowship just with internet search and, applied to that and got that fellowship. So that was my first real job at, of college, full-time job. And it was excellent for learning about different environmental topics, um, because you got to work on various projects where. You would have people from all different sectors discussing, trying to identify their shared goals. So if everybody was working on plastic waste and they had the goal to eliminate plastic waste, but disagreed on how to get there and when to get there, they tried to negotiate and collaborate and figure out a pathway forward together, and you would have people from all the different sectors and so I got good exposure to the different fields, subfields within climate, and got to figure out what kind of role I wanted to play in that and on which topics, and at the same time was volunteering with YOUNGO, which is the children and youth constituency of. The YOUNGO, which is the climate arm of the United Nations, and that was an amazing experience. I got to work with youth from all around the world and in different languages on the policy demands that youth had of their governments and of the international body and multilateral organizations to help us not pass a 1.5 degree warming From there I saw the common challenges that young people around the world were facing and trying to get involved, stay involved and advance their amazing solutions. And I knew that I could do something about it, so I started making a plan for. Youth Climate Collaborative after a professor at AU was like, you should start writing this stuff down. Nothing's gonna happen until you start writing it, making it a plan. And so that was kind of the push I needed instead of having everything as just thoughts in my head. Have it fleshed out on paper, start getting feedback from friends and peers and advisors and get the ball rolling so that when an opportunity came, I'd be ready for it. And that opportunity came let's see, February, 2020 was when I started drafting and. I think it was August that there was an opportunity to apply for$60,000 to educate, empower, and activate youth in the climate space. And, uh, I ended up winning it. So that was the kickstarter for Youth Climate Collaborative and really the encouragement I needed to say, yeah, your ideas are solid. We support you. Go, go run with it.

John:

Well, congratulations.$60,000 is a pretty good kickstart.

Pooja:

Yeah. Yeah, it was good.

John:

Now you mentioned YOUNGO and uh, earlier this season we talked with another amazing young person, Harshita, and I'll bet that's the connection between you two, isn't it?

Pooja:

That's correct. We met through YOUNGO. She was leading the health working group and we do some work on mental health, and so we had connected via that nexus,

John:

Now we should ask you before we run out of time, what the climate action that you've chosen for us today is.

Pooja:

It's really important to unplug appliances and devices when you're not using them. It's a simple thing. We can all do it. Some countries even have switches that you can turn off when you're not using it, so you don't even have to unplug. You just turn off the switch. So wherever you are, turn off the switch or unplug the device appliance, et cetera.

John:

Very important climate action. we have one of those little devices that measures the electricity that's used and we've plugged in almost everything in our house into that to see if it bleeds any electricity when it's not in use and some things are nothing and other things, we have a little electric heating pad for, you know, if you're injured or something, and it uses as much as a light bulb when it's off just plugged in. So I'm with you on that. Climate action for sure. Last question for you today. What gives you hope.

Pooja:

I think all my peers give me hope. young people around the world are doing incredible things, and it's amazing to see. They're making solar powered devices to improve water quality. They're creating sanitary pads, they're creating or making chocolate bars, but ethically sourced. Just a number of cool innovations and technologies. They're also organizing, you know, indigenous leaders, making sure they're prepared for this climate conference that's coming up in, Belén in their backyard, uh, ensuring that they know what it is, they know how to present their demands. And, um, really speak up for themselves. it's just really inspiring to see everybody sacrificing a lot of their own time and even their personal lives to make this stuff happen. And I'm not saying everybody should do that, it's not the most healthy thing to do, but it's inspiring to see that this is so important to a lot of us that, you know, we're even willing to sacrifice these things for the greater good.

John:

Well, we've heard just a few of the many, many things you're doing Pooja, and so when you were talking about prioritizing and having to let go of some things, we're glad that you didn't let go of this interview. So thanks so much for taking time for join us here today

Pooja:

Yeah. Thank you for having me. This was fun.

John:

And thank you, dear listener slash fewer. We will be back again, same time, same place next week to hear from another climate action figure. Until then,

Pooja:

Go figures!