In our final conversation of Season 2, Environmentalism Reimagined, we meet with Atwooki, creator of Yuniya.
Named after her grandmother, Yuniya is a storytelling platform using African mythology to educate children, parents and caregivers about climate change and Earth care.
Join us in this inspirational conversation as we explore how African mythology and storytelling is making climate action and ‘joyful activism’ more relatable, empowering and culturally relevant.
Through reclaiming African knowledge and building relationships across generations, Yuniya is bringing conversations on climate change, out from policy spaces and street protests into homes and community centres, where they belong.
This is an episode of active hope, enjoy!
Episode time stamps
00:00 - Intro to episode
02:52 - Atwooki’s relationship with nature
06:23 - How a conversation with her son, led Atwooki to create Yuniya
15:11 - What Yuniya do
20:04 - The life-changing impact of Yuniya on children, parents and caregivers
23:31 - How Yuniya has empowered a boy to lead a campaign to change the world map
28:35 - The importance of community education spaces in black liberation movements
30:38 - Marion shares a framework to define what growth looks like in social change
34:05 - Lessons on how we can engage children on climate change and joyful activism in an empowering way
39:48 - How to support black parents and caregivers of black children to feel empowered in Earth care
46:51 - Why the binary of ‘individual action versus systemic change’ limits our possibilities to engage everybody
52:16 - Atwooki’s recommendations to policy-makers
54:31 - How to support Atwooki and Yuniya
01:01:00 - How to support Black Earth
Support Atwooki and Yuniya
Yuniya - https://yuniya.com/pages/home
Support Black Earth Podcast
Connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Tiktok: @blackearthpodcast
Subscribe and read episode transcripts: https://www.blackearthpodcast.com/
Support us through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BlackEarthPodcast
Song credits
The Kora music in this episode is courtesy of Malamin and Yuniya platform
Resource mentioned in the episode
A framework on measuring impact in social change (Scaling Up, Scaling Out, Scaling Deep) by Michele-lee Moore, Darcy Riddell, and Dan Vocisano