Meet Our Humans On The Ground, Part Two

29 June 2021 Revive

Volunteers are the lifeblood of our organisation. They’re the everyday superheroes who make our projects and our purpose achievable.

We wanted to ask some of our humans on the ground why they were choosing to take action for nature, and had the opportunity to speak to a few of our future stewards – the generations who are making a change – at a beach clean up in Sandringham, Victoria, last Wednesday.

Lola (8), Lacey (7) and Nan

Lola and Lacy had a curriculum day off school, and what did they choose to do? Join a beach clean up event, picking up ocean litter to protect our waterways, so they could “help the animals that are in the ocean,” says 7-year-old Lacey.

CVA Project Officer Jess spoke at their school the day before, where Lola, Lacy and their peers all sorted Styrofoam and microplastics amongst other plastics.

“We know that it’s not good for the ocean, so we sorted it into bins” says Lola, “it’s important for our future.”

Lola and Lacy were joined by their lovely Nan for the ocean litter clean-up, who states proudly she got the girls into recycling because she was “picky about the bins!”

“Lola in particular is very much a recycling, reusing, re-purposing kind of girl and takes pollution and recycling very seriously,” Nan adds.

“I’ve done recycling and soft plastic recycling, I’ve done a worm farm, we got a new big couple of compost bins free from Bunnings and this year we’re starting a big mural with a bunch of plastic that we’re going to find off the beach to put on the wall,” says Lola.

Lola is a Marine Ambassador at her school adds Nan, where she’s influenced her friends to do the same.

“So this day’s just one more thing to add to what she’s pretty passionate about!”

How does she get her friends involved too? She makes the most of quarantine and had zoom meetings with her fellow marine ambassadors, and the inspirational people and kids.

During the holidays they’ve also made mesh bags with Nan.

“Mesh bags we can put in our fruit when we go to Aldi instead of plastic ones. And then we also made beeswax wraps,” adds Lola.

And when asked why they were out here today being a part of the CVA #SeaToSource clean up?

“Because we’re saving animals lives,” says Lacey.

“And we’re saving the planet!” adds Lola.

“And it’s up to us because we live here!” exclaims Nan.

Tahli and Nitaa, Med Students

Nitaa and Tahli met at their first year of med school, and just hit it off. Then, they ended up at the same hospital training together, and now they’re tackling planetary health together!

“We’re doing a subject coming up in winter called planetary and global health and it was Nita’s idea to come today” says Tahli.

“I watched David Attenborough’s most recent documentary and I just felt so sad and immediately I was like ‘I have to do something about this’ and just looked at what was online and what was local and found this beach clean-up and thought that was perfect,” says Nitaa.

“So I think this is great. I also wanted a chance to meet other people and whatever would help.”

Tahli adds, “Nitaa recently bought me a keep cup for my birthday too!”

“I haven’t done anything like this before but just like Nitaa, I now want to do a bit more. Especially because all of these issues are more in front of me now because, probably because of my masters of Public Health, and also just learning more and being more interested, so yeah, the more you learn the more you want to do!”

“One more thing is that I feel like this clean up and cleaning up litter and doing similar things are within our control, whereas I feel like so much of climate change you just feel so helpless because it seems so dominated by large corporations having to take the action. And I feel like while you can protest and do all of those things, cleaning up litter is something tangible that you can make a difference in” summarises Nitaa.

Want to do your part for the world around you too? Check out how you can be involved here!

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