By: Reem Sameh

“The World has had an opportunity to heal at the short period of COVID-19”, Constantinides said.

The second episode of GCTalks was broadcasted Thursday, tackling the climate activism in the time of COVID-19, while marking the World Environment Day and also World Oceans Day.

We decided to allocate this second episode of GCTALKS to discuss numerous environmental issues and since we believe that we have to act local and think global we hosted one of the most prominent International climate activists Ms. Catherine Constantinides, a prominent South African environmentalist and social entrepreneur.

At the beginning of the episode Catherine expressed her happiness and honor to be hosted at GCTalks and for addressing the Egyptian people again.  

Referring to Coronavirus, Catherine emphasized that people in South Africa are abiding the government’s preventive measures, as this is a pandemic that we can’t avoid and the whole world is facing it, and that’s why Catherine is staying at home which is a different thing to her as she always travels and works on the ground, but that won’t stop her from reaching her audience, as an influential leader she uses her social media platforms to spread awareness. 

Catherine stressed that we need to exert more effort and speak to our political leaders to reach solutions for the climate change. “Climate change is a human right”, Catherine said. She also emphasized that we need to understand what climate change is, the impact of it and what it is doing.

Also we need to understand that climate change is man made and the process of industrialization the world have gone through and trying to be greater and bigger than the next country contributed significantly to climate change, and that’s why at this short period of COVID-19 the world has had an opportunity to go through a healing process as our impact on the world has been decreased, and that is undeniable

As she mentioned in our episode, Catherine was crowned the first Miss Earth South Africa in 2003, and she is trying to share her knowledge and empower women through the miss earth South Africa organization not only in South Africa but around the continent. She also got selected as one of South Africa’s 21 icons.

Second GCTalks witnessed great interaction from our audience and received many comments and questions and Catherine responded to them and they thank her for her informative Answers. 

Catherine advised the youth to be brave enough if given the opportunity to engage with leaders and be real and put in front of their leaders what their challenges, insecurities and solutions are and give them also ideas and innovative thoughts.

It’s worth mentioning that the second episode of Global Citizen Talks (GCTalks) sponsored by the African Youth Bureau and the Central Administration for Cultural and Voluntary Programs in the Egyptian Ministry of Youth and Sports.

The episode was broadcasted live on the social media pages of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the African Youth Bureau, Nasser Youth Movement, Model African Union and Africa-Asia Youth Foundation.

The program's guest list includes a number of decision makers and youth leader from different countries and in various fields. With the aim of broadcasting positive messages to the world’s youth to create a link between youth and decision makers.

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