“TEACHERS HAVE SUCH A HUGE JOB... AND TEACHERS ARE SUCH A TRUSTED VOICE. I KNOW MY PARENTS TRUST TEACHERS SO MUCH. IT’S SIMILAR TO WHEN DOCTORS SPEAK OUT ABOUT SOMETHING. THE VOICES OF TEACHERS CAN CONVINCE OTHER ADULTS.”
ALIENOR ROUGEOT KF: Can you tell me how you first got involved in climate activism?
Alienor Rougeot: It’s a bit of a long story but as a kid I grew up around a lot of nature in the south of France and I remember when I got on the internet around the age of 10, I started learning about wildlife. I was that kid at school asking my teachers to do everything on biodiversity. Then the refugee crisis hit in Syria and a lot of refugees were arriving on the shore an hour away from my house. I met people from groups like Amnesty International and I started doing activism to help and, eventually, after being in these circles, people started ask- ing me if I had heard about climate change. It is an issue that engages both my passion for animal protection and refugee issues. That’s when I became deeply committed to the climate justice side of things. When I moved to Toronto, I wanted to do things around climate and I found some places in student unions and on campus. Then Doug Ford was elected and I knew that was it, we need to take to the streets because it was getting too big. That coincided with Greta Thunberg starting to strike. I was looking around for anyone who wanted to do that with me and that’s when I met some of the core people who first got active.
KF: How do you feel about the state of the world as we begin a new decade? How have Fridays for Future helped focus your energy?
AR: 2020 has been brutal so far and the Australian fires are symp- tomatic of what is waiting for us all. People. Animals. And then all the wars and the attacks are clearly part of a broken system. Obviously it
24 ETFO VOICE | SPRING 2020
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