12 year old Dakota Peebler, along with other representatives of Heirs To Our Oceans, met with our team at the David Brower Center in January. David McGuire, Founder/Director of Earth Island Institute’s Shark Stewards also joined our session, which focused on oceans campaign work and areas for future collaboration. The International Marine Mammal Project applauds the efforts of these young activists who are going the distance to protect the oceans.
Heirs To Our Oceans are youth leaders, dedicated to inspire awareness, responsibility, action and connectivity amongst youth worldwide to protect the waters of our blue planet for us and future generations.
That is our mission. Encouraging youth empowerment and making connections is how we will achieve an upswell of youth to stand up for their generation and future generations. We are creating the next generation of environmental leaders.
It is imperative to empower youth to protect the water on our big blue planet, because we kids, we must be the turning point. What is happening to our oceans now will affect the health of OUR kids and OUR grandkids. THAT is why connecting youth around the globe is so important. We must all join hands in being the solution to this global problem of an ocean crisis.
We are from different parts of the world, of different cultures, different ethnicities, different religions, and all together different ways of life. But our generation, we must have one goal: Protection of our water planet.
ALL youth can join together and become a huge community, a family of environmental leaders, who will use our voices for the good of our oceans, our planet and our health. We must learn about the problems our ocean faces and become a part of the solution. We must keep on working toward protection of our oceans no matter how challenging it might feel. If us kids don't step up, for our generation and our kids’ generation, who will?
If you’re an adult, support your kids in protecting their ocean. Educate them starting in elementary school about how all waterways are connected to our ocean, no matter where they live. In middle school, teach ocean science as well as human impact on our oceans. In high school, start processing high-level solutions! Make space and opportunity for your kids to learn about their water planet and the problems it faces and to think about solutions!
Don’t forget to make space for your kids to be in, on, or near clean water. As Dr. Wallace J Nichols makes clear, we need that for our cognitive, spiritual, psychological, physiological and mental health. We kids, we need a #BlueMind.
Kids, don’t be afraid of research and of reaching out to experts to learn more! Research the human impacts on our ocean and the ocean’s natural resources – plants and animals -- that matter to you.
We can be a team as an empowered ribbon of powerful youth wrapped around this globe.
We Heirs, we are all about tenacity. Just don't give up. Don’t stop.
Connect! And don’t stop connecting. We are your ocean-protecting family, no matter where we live or are from. Keep talking to your fellow youth, this global community, about what we all can do, even miles away from each other. The challenge of tackling the problems our ocean faces will feel much more attainable if we know we have a team made up of our generation sprinkled all around this planet.
Empower and inspire more people to take action with you. Start a campaign! Join Heirs To Our Oceans! Bring more people into your circle of empowered youth.
If we youth stick together and continue to grow our big ocean-protecting family, then we can more easily take the next steps to solve our ocean crisis for our generation and generations to come!
WE CAN DO THIS! Together.
