Six months on - Hezel's reflections on the Bali Conference

Q1. What were the key things you learnt from your experience in Bali?

First I learned to manage my time and take care of myself. I also learned how to prepare and talk to people during a conference. My most important learning is the sad condition of our mother earth and there are rich nations contributing more to global warming. It is encouraging, however, to know tat children like me can help slow down or minimize global warming no matter how small our contribution could be.

Q2. How has your participation in the Bali process changed your views and behaviour?

Some changes actually happened to me while preparing for the Bal conference. As the President of Paraiso Active Youth and Children’s organization (PAYCO), I used to telling my ideas ang making decisions for our children’s organization. Now I seek and consider the views of our group members on what I would share in Bali.

During the conference, I realized how huge was the problem on global warming and its frightening effects to the children like me as well as the future generations. But even though global warming is very discouraging, I know children like me can also help.

Before going to Bali, we just help our community during coastal clean up, tree planting and waste management. But now I know that we have to share the information on global warming to other people and ask our government officials to have programs and projects to prevent global warming

Q3. Since Bali, have you done anything with your friends/school/family on climate change related issues?

I shared my experiences and learnings in Bali to my family and friends. Then I attended our Barangay Council for the Protection of Children (BCPC) meeting and shared my experiences with the village officials. As a result, our BCPC Chair hlped us to request seedlings from our mayor and he even helped us in our tree planting. The elementary school principal also allowed us to use portion of the school where to plant our seedlings as well as an area for our proposed seedlings nursery. I was also invited to talk during one session of our municipal leaders. Children’s groups in other municipalities have also invited me to talk during their “Baragatan Kabataan” (Children’s Gathering). I have shared to them all the learning from my Bali experience and asked to help or support projects against global warming.

Eni's story since attending COP13 in Bali in December 2007

There are so many thing that I have gained after attending the UN climate change conference in Bali last year.

One of them is to have the chance to speak in an international forum. Other than that, we also had the chance to see the negotiations that took place by the delegates around the world in the forum. We even had the change to ask questions to the delegates on the affects of the changing climate to children rights all over the world.

From this experience, I realize that even the smallest things that we do can make a large impact to our environment.

Climate change is a global issue that has a huge impact in our daily lives. Most of the people where I live in Indonesia are farmers. Right now, our farmers are puzzled in determining the time to plant the rice. Climate change has indirectly caused harvest failure and thus reducing our income. For example, my mother right now is having difficulties in paying my tuition.

From above example, one question that comes into my mind is “Can we just sit still and not do anything?”. Choosing to be silent or not doing anything while watching this is the same as to make this thing last forever and make things worst. It is true that our government, I think, has not yet shown that it can tackle climate change. But, I will not just sit still and wait.

Couple of things that I have done after the Bali conference is:

1. Socialization of Climate Change to my friends.

Minimum knowledge of my friend’s around climate change issues is still a challenge that we faced today. For that reason, me and my friends conducted socialization on the danger and impact of climate change to our families, friends in school, friends in the village, and also my friends in the youth groups. The main point is to invite them to do something for our environment.

2. Tree plantation

Socialization without positive action is nothing. I and my friends organize a tree plantation activity in a sub district called Pulokulon. We selected this village because there is a water spring that is used by the surrounding communities for clean water, with population of more then 100,000 people that is benefiting this spring. We did this to protect our source of water for us and generations to come.

3. I also trained 15 children in 3 villages to reuse their waste and convert it to other products that we can use, such as dolls and photo frames. They also commit to reduce their plastic consumption to minimum.

From the small things that I have done, I believe and positive that it can leads to greater things.

Eni