Your actions matter

Vanessa Nakate

Published Nov 21, 2022

Community Executive at the Laidlaw Foundation and Laidlaw Scholar Alumnus, Durham Unviersity

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**Vanessa Nakate:** *"Your actions matter. No action or voice is too small to make a difference."*
Image credit: Paul Wamala Ssegujja, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As COP 27 has drawn to a close over the weekend, our inspirational quote this week comes from the climate activist Vanessa Nakate.

Vanessa Nakate (1996-) is a Ugandan climate activist who founded the climate-focused Youth for Future Africa and the Rise Up Movement to raise awareness about the effects and impact of climate change in Uganda and Africa.

Nakate grew up and completed her education in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. She rose to the public eye in 2018 when she began a solitary strike against climate inaction outside the Ugandan Parliament. This was later joined by many from across the country. Nakate used this opportunity to found the Youth for Future Africa and the Rise Up Movement to provide a platform for African climate activists to have their voices heard. In Uganda, she has started the Green Schools Projects, which aims to transition Ugandan schools to solar energy.

Most recently, Nakate was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Learn more.

✨ Malala Yousafzai - "Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality."

☮ Martin Luther King Jr. - "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle,"

👩🏾‍⚖️ Ketanji Brown Jackson - “You can’t always expect to be the smartest person in the room but you can promise to be the hardest working.”

🗳️Millicent Fawcett - "Courage calls to courage everywhere, and its voice cannot be denied."

Peter Vojnits

Community Executive at the Laidlaw Foundation and Laidlaw Scholar Alumnus, Durham Unviersity

Hello all! I did my Laidlaw Programme at Durham University between 2019-2021. My research project focused on evaluating the immigration and asylum system of the EU through a case study of the 2015 immigration crisis. Following the completion of my undergraduate LLB degree I moved to London to pursue my postgraduate LLM study at Queen Mary University of London. I'm also a Project Assistant at the Laidlaw Foundation on a part-time basis. If you have any cool ideas for the Laidlaw Scholars Network or the Foundation, please hit me up on here or LinkedIn and let's discuss it! :)