Niki Cheong » severn suzuki http://www.nikicheong.com/blog Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:06:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Severn Suzuki: The girl who silenced the world for 5 mins http://www.nikicheong.com/blog/severn-suzuki-the-girl-who-silenced-the-world-for-5-mins.html http://www.nikicheong.com/blog/severn-suzuki-the-girl-who-silenced-the-world-for-5-mins.html#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:17:59 +0000 niki http://www.nikicheong.com/blog/?p=1712 Okay, perhaps that headline has a bit of dramatics – after all, the room wasn’t even full if you watch the video properly. That said, the words of the then only 12 years old girl was more articulate, confident and challenging than some of the best speakers that exist today.

Perhaps it is because she spoke from the heart.

Severn Suzuki

This is Severn Cullis-Suzuki (who turns 30 next week – my age!).  At age 12, she and some other members of the Environmental Children’s Organisation (EDO) saved up their own money to fly over to Rio De Janeiro to attend the Earth Summit and presented to its adult delegates a youth perspective to the environmental issues the world is facing (more info on her in WikiPedia).

This was back in 1992.

The video of that speech has since gone viral (and I will share it below) for a while, but I just came across it yesterday when it was ReTweeted by Marina. It was linked to a Cause page (I think this is the one linked to the Facebook application) – which aimed to get 500 people to watch it.

Only 500? I woke up this morning and less than 15 people had watched it in the eight hours I’ve been asleep (granted, they could have watched it elsewhere but still!). Considering the millions on the Internet, this is a terribly small number. So I thought I’d share it here.

This is the link to the Cause page. If you watch it here instead, it will include you into the tally of people who have watched it.

9.12am Malaysian time (+8 GMT)

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