"Youth are going to get the job done whether the higher-ups help us or not."
That's the message from Ela Gokcigdem, a 24-year-old student at Massachusetts' Babson College who recently attended the UN Ocean Conference Youth and Innovation Forum in Cascais, Portugal, where she discussed sustainable economic practices for coastal communities affected by the climate crisis.
Gokcigdem, from Turkey, is a sustainability intern at Babson, and she's also working on a climate tech startup that she's developing through the Cleantech Open Northeast cleantech startup accelerator program, reports the Boston Globe.
The forum was an opportunity for young leaders to help implement the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG 14), which states: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.
"Hope manifests itself in so many ways, and while the hope I gained from this conference stemmed from frustration, I am determined to use my entrepreneurial spirit to persevere and bring my communities' voices with me to create change that we deserve," Gokcigdem says.
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