April 2024 Young Planet Leader – Grace Kejo
Grace Kejo is a 17-year-old educator and advocate for equitable systems of learning. Her work includes research, organizing, public speaking, and advocating for policy change. Her biggest project currently is WeAreChange, a youth organization she founded to provide language-specific sustainability education to youth in developing nations.
Grace’s efforts have been recognized nationally and internationally, and as a result, she has been awarded the Beacon Scholarship, Selected as a Rise finalist, and received recognition from Yale University as a young global scholar.
She is a GirlUP young leader and club founder. In 2023, she collaborated with MockCOP to bring their Teach the Teacher campaign to Tanzania, with a session educating almost a hundred teachers and school administrators on the importance of climate change, eco anxiety’s impact on students, and how to bring climate conversations into the classroom. She was also selected as Tanzania’s delegate to the Mock Education Minister’s Summit, contributing to the global youth statement on climate education, which was discussed at COP28, and the Tanzanian climate education statement which she delivered to the education ministry in Tanzania. She hopes to continue working with the ministry, to provide a youth perspective on sustainability education in the country.
Grace also believes in the power of storytelling for impact, and through her YouTube channel, music, and public speaking she advocates for equity and educational reform. A two-time TEDx speaker, Grace has tackled Educational Inequality, Student well-being, and AI’s role in educating for social good on the global stage. Her music, (under the artist name Jua/Nia) addresses mental health issues, and her YouTube channel StudyNova, which has received almost 30,000 views, aims to close the educational information access gap by providing free guidance and student advice on educational opportunities. This year, she will upscale her impact as a content creator at Crimson Education, a world-leading educational consultancy service.
Aside from working with local and international organizations such as HundrED, YouthxYouth, APOPO, and the World Literacy Foundation as an ambassador and activist, she is the executive director of her organization WeAreChange which creates and delivers Activity-based Impact workshops, Discussion style and translated into local languages. So far WAC has reached Tanzania and Brazil and is working on building teams in Mexico and Eastern Europe.
The goal is to create a movement by youth, and for youth that will deliver education on global issues and sustainability education to inspire youth into advocacy and action.
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Follow Grace’s work:
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-kejo-a5a246279/
WeAreChange Instagram: https://instagram.com/Wearechange.global
WeAreChange LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/we-are-change-global/
WeAreChange Website: https://wearechangeglobal.wixsite.com/wearechange
StudyNova YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/studynovaa
Grace’s Music:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dduTRmmAVIGM8l1dTuIoj?si=jtcZxSYuQWqebhUanQ464g&ut