Meet Eissa, a climate activist from Yemen.
This is Eissa’s story.
Eissa is studying for his undergraduate degree in Business Administration at the University of Aberdeen. He co-founded Adopt IN, a start-up social enterprise working on solutions to the climate crisis and supporting the community to mitigate problems caused by the crisis.
He is a member and volunteer with several international climate groups including Friday for Future, 2050 Climate Group, and Greenpeace, as well as university societies: The Secret Garden, Aberdeen Youth Climate Gathering, Society for Energy Transition, and Social Enterprise Society.
Eissa supports young people to engage with climate activism.
“I am currently working with a programme launched to support youth to participate at COP29 this year.
“Also I am working with Scottish Parliament on the monitoring programme project called Knowledge Transition: Scotland to Yemen. The aims of this project is to translate the knowledge, experiences and lessons learned from Scotland to Yemen on climate change and environmental problems, including inspiring Yemeni youth and how they can influence organisations in Yemen.
“There are two strands to the project.
“The first is a discussion between youth and organisations about sharing knowledge and experience, building relationships, and maybe creating opportunities for partnerships in future aswell. These kinds of partnerships could be technical or logistics or funding.
“The second part is capacity building. We will try to target 40 youths from Yemen who are able to learn about climate change and build their skills and knowledge, support them and educate them to take action in their local area or communities and maybe target their schools and universities, cultural activities, to raise awareness between these youths – maybe can make them climate change activists for future. These are our projects.”
Eissa took part in our Reaching New Scots Fund project.
“We built this project from the beginning starting with criteria and eligibility, assessing applications, helping organisations with how to apply, then after that we work with Fund managers to assess applications and contact groups who apply for the fund, asking for clarifications, and so on. We really did a good job.
“We had magnificent feedback from the organisations and funded, I think 51 organisations? It was a good environment for me to develop my skills and generate my knowledge. Our colleagues were tremendous people in how they guided me.”
Eissa also took part in our Leadership programme.
The New Scots Leadership programme, in partnership with Social Enterprise Academy, develops participants’ leadership skills, including how to be a good leader, how to build a new organisation, how to build partnerships, and organisational planning.
“We really enjoyed these activities. The programme – I can describe it like opening a door for me to consider myself as a leader, to manage a team and develop my skills to move forward in my life and career.
“This course is like a rocket for me to fly and find myself as a leader. I have a lot of skills and this course showed me that I can use them, helped me to manage them. I have passion, I am capable and I can make family and friends proud of me.”
Eissa, we wish you every success!
Thanks for reading Eissa’s story. Find out more about our Storytelling project, and read more stories from our community.
Image Copyright: Open Aye
