TIES VAN DER HOEVEN

TIES VAN DER HOEVEN

/

Creative Director & Co-founder of The Weather Makers holistic engineering company

The story behind The Weather Makers and the whole intention is that five years by accident, I was working in a dredging company and one of the commercial people from Egypt approached me on a question about a lagoon where the fish were disappearing. So we started with this very small thing and set up a whole flow modelling approach, so really from the hydraulics, we could determine what would happen with the fish. And that really was the regretting the Sinai could have a very big impact on the world.

JENNIFER MORGAN

JENNIFER MORGAN

/

Fmr. Executive Director of Greenpeace International
Special Envoy for International Climate Action · German Foreign Ministry

I have always hoped and dreamt to work with young people because I’ve always felt that it is their future. It’s so inspiring to be working with young people all around the world. I feel that we are in the midst of transformational change and that working together around these key moments where you can see those shifts happening – unimaginable things that you never thought were going to happen can happen. That would be my other advice to young activists that just when you aren’t expecting it, something will happen and you’ll be like, “I can’t believe they just decided that! Holy cow!” And then you’ve got to celebrate.

SHIMON SCHWARZCHILD

SHIMON SCHWARZCHILD

/

Environmental Activist
Founder Assisi Bird Campaign & Action for Nature

I witnessed being totally rejected and not only witnessed, I remembered as a ten-year old all the children would go to a class in eugenics that I was not allowed to go to. I remember the insults that children learned against Jews while I was still in Germany. And I’m one of the lucky Jews who managed to leave.”

EDMAR CASTANEDA

EDMAR CASTANEDA

/

Jazz Harpist

The harp or the instrument that I play is a traditional instrument from Colombia (I’m from Bogota, Colombia). We have traditional music there called Janetta music. It’s the music from the plains of Colombia and Venezuala. It’s like the cowboy music… I met the harp when I was seven years old. That’s the first time I saw this instrument. I was like–Wow! I knew I was born to play the harp that day!

PETER SINGER

PETER SINGER

/

Most Influential Living Philosopher
Author · Founder of The Life You Can Save

I would like young people to recognise that they are part of a long tradition that has been trying to the make the world a better place. A tradition that goes back as far as we have recorded history, that there are people who tried to–like Socrates, but also like Buddha and many other figures in different cultures–think more about how we ought to live and tried to live in accordance with their thinking. Tried to do good in the world and that’s a traditional they can be part of. This generation really does hold the future of the planet in its hands.

JUNG CHANG

JUNG CHANG

/

Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans

Writing Wild Swans was the thing that resolved the trauma for me. When I first came to Britain in 1978, I was one of the first people to leave China and come to the West. I wrote about the experience in Wild Swans. And for many years I had nightmares of the horrible things I saw and experienced. Writing Wild Swans made all these nightmares disappear. It was a wonderful process. The writing process turned trauma in memory. I am now able to talk to you about my book, my life, to read it without too much pain. I think this is a luxury people in China still don’t have.