Global Children and Youth Appeal on Climate Change and Health

Sign the Appeal! The text is also available in French, Spanish, and soon other languages on the HEY Campaign’s webpage. Volunteer to translate in your language! Email: [email protected]

Dear friends

Dear neighbors

Dear leaders from rich nations

… and less privileged ones

Dear brothers and sisters

We are HEY! [Healthy and Environment-friendly Youth]

 

For us, the Earth is

… our ONLY home 

… our shelter 

… our Mother 

We need it to survive, not the other way around

We are not the hosts, but the guests!

 

We’re calling for healthier futures 

We’re calling on everyone to respect the environment 

… and live in harmony with Nature 

 

Climate change

… increases the frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, hurricanes 

… causes more forest fires 

… and water scarcity 

 

Climate change leads to

… cardiovascular and respiratory diseases 

… and an exacerbation of diseases that most affect children 

 

We want

… a world where wealth is not used to produce more consumerism 

… but to lift the poor out of poverty 

… inclusive societies, where people living with disabilities are protected 

… where businesses pay more attention to their environmental impact 

… and do not promote unhealthy foods 

 

We want measures to drastically reduce the amount of emissions from factories and oil and gas companies in our countries 

Deforestation is one of the main contributing factors of poverty. We want to get out of this cycle! 

We want to protect our seas! 

We want to live in insecticide- and pesticide-free societies

We want to raise awareness about climate change amongst our people 

 

We want

… to transform our education systems, now, to build an eco-friendly generation 

… not to rely 100% on industrial food production 

… and countries to use the Covid-19 crisis to accelerate their green transition 

… not fossil-fuel production. 

 

More than anything else 

… we want to transform fear into hope! 

 

Good news: there are solutions 

.. but these solutions require changing the predatory systems we live in 

 

We’re calling on all youth, let us repeat: ALL youth, to take action, even small 

We have to begin from somewhere 

Some call it the butterfly effect 

 

Don’t forget that the Covid-19 crisis is an example of what’s ahead of us 

... if we don’t take bold steps to build healthier and environment-friendly societies 

 

So we dream of a world

... where zero children die of air pollution 

… where upcoming generations get to experience most flora and fauna species, we had the fortune to savour as children 

… where we listen to the local knowledge of indigenous peoples 

… where Reduce, Recycle, Reuse is more than a slogan! 

 

A world that unites for the betterment of our planet 

… where women and men, girls and boys 

… are treated equally 

… and where people fight climate change, not each other 

 

We are HEY 

Are you HEY? 

Are we HEY together? 

 

Join HEY Movement!