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At just 14 years, Ellyanne Wanjiku Chlystun Githae has become a leading voice in the fight for a cleaner and fairer climate. Her passion for protection of the environment is evident in the authoritative message she has for world leaders as they head to Baku, Azerbaijan for the 29th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29).
“Action!” she shouted, when Down To Earth (DTE) asked her what message she had for world leaders attending the COP29. “Try harder, try harder, try harder,” she added.
The teenager’s story with climate and environmental activism dates back to when she was just four years old. “When I was in kindergarten, we did a project on heroes — people like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Florence Nightingale who had made a difference in people’s lives,” Wanjiku told DTE.
But her greatest inspiration came from Kenya’s foremost environmental activist, Wangari Maathai. Maathai, nick-named ‘the Mother of trees’ formed The Green Belt Movement in 1977.
The non-profit was a platform for mobilising people, particularly women, to plant trees with the understanding that a greener environment could fundamentally change the situation of women in Kenya. By 2011, when she died, Maathai and her network of women had planted an estimated 45 million trees.
Her work inspired the United Nations to launch a campaign that led to the planting of 11 billion trees worldwide. In 2004, Maathai became the first Arican woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and was since referred to as the first "green" Nobel laureate. It’s this woman who inspired the teenage environmental activist.
Ellyanne Wanjiku Chlystun has now become a leading campaigner for the protection of the environment, as the world’s climate continues to warm. She says if she ate an orange or a lemon, she would plant the seed, and as it germinated and grew, she would be motivated to plant even more.
With her family's support, Ellyanne established a non-profit organisation called Children with Nature in 2017. It is intended to teach children how they can create a positive impact in their communities, it said.
Together with the community of tree-lovers, she has built across Africa and around the world, they have planted at least 1.3 million trees, Wanjiku said.
Wanjiku’s commitment to environmental protection is not only about planting trees. She has attended several COPs, speaking out boldly about the environment and climate change, and everything in-between.
In 2023 for instance, she attended the climate summit in Dubai, where she met King Charles and gave a speech that established the linkages between climate change and the spread of malaria. And that campaign against the spread of malaria led her to star in an international campaign with fellow Zero Malaria Ambassador and footballer David Beckham.
"The 'Change the Story' malaria campaign with David Beckham was special, especially that a child dies every minute from malaria — a profound statistic for a disease that has been around over 60 years,” she told DTE.
In her commitment to a better and fairer world, Wanjiku has met with celebrities, kings and presidents, some of the meetings of particular significance to her.
“Meeting world leaders, lawmakers and celebrities, chief executives and influencing policy is a great focus of mine,” Wanjiku said. One such moment was meeting President Emmamnuel Macron of France and presenting him the New Global Financial Pact Children's Declaration in Paris which called for “a more equitable global financing pact, one that safeguards a just and sustainable future for all the children across the globe”.
Yet, Wanjiku’s greatest moment of pride comes when she is planting trees.
“The most memorable moment was every time I took direct action with other children, planting trees or awareness on plastic pollution,” she told DTE.
“In 2023, I ideated and organised the 1st ever Child-Led Global Children Climate Summit amid loads of challenges, with some sponsors backing out at the last minute, which culminated into a children’s declaration,” she said.
The declaration came on the sidelines of the inaugural Africa Climate
Summit that took place in Nairobi, Kenya from August 31-September 2, 2023. It urged for global backing to enhance children's climate advocacy initiatives, as they seek to underscore climate-related violations of children's rights and propose solutions on an international platform.
Balancing school with numerous national and international events is challenging for anyone, let alone an adult. But for Wanjiku, surmounting hurdles is fundamental to her nature.
“I love challenges,” she said. “Challenges are part of what builds a solid legacy. That's how change comes about. I call them jet fuel that always propels me to higher levels,” she told DTE. “If you look at all these people that made a difference to the world like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Wangari Maathai, they all overcame loads of challenges.”
And she has developed methods of overcoming obstacles. “Persistence,” she said, is one way of doing that. It means “basically, to have fire in the belly, using my own resources are some of the ways I have overcome challenges.”
“I am very positive-minded, I ignore naysayers. In fact, I do the
opposite. Constantly learning and topping up my knowledge,” she told
DTE. “To be able to articulate such key topics at high level meetings is not about practicing at the mirror. I arm myself with knowledge,” she said.
But like all human beings, there are always limits to human imagination, and Wanjiku would then turn to God for help. “Prayer. Reading the Word of God. This particular verse resonates with me daily: But those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint — Isaiah 40:31.”