Profile: Sivan Koen

I am a Greek-Jewish teen from NYC who cares about what is right, gets involved in my community, and wants to motivate and lead others towards a common goal, whatever that may be. I enjoy learning and I want to get educated on the issues I care about so I can make an impact. I like to read, play the guitar, learn new languages and watch TV.

In my home we always recycled—however when I went outside I would not carry those values with me. Recently I made a conscious decision to become more invested in recycling outside of my home and anywhere I went with my summer camp. As I made this change, I started to realize how much people don't care. In my summer camp, we used a lot of plastic bottles and I would go around with a large garbage bag trying to collect as many bottles as I could and find a place to recycle them. I noticed there was a lot to be done to get people to care. Even by starting with this small action, I could make some small difference. After I began collecting recyclable goods, people from the camp would come to me and help me clean up the recycling, which made me happy and gave me hope. In general, after making that change in my life I started to look for places where I could recycle and I couldn't help but notice the lack of effort to make recycling accessible.

I am interested in joining FXB Climate Advocates because I care about and am very concerned with the issue of climate change and want to make a difference. I want to learn more about what I can do as well as how to help build a community at my school that cares about the issue of climate change. I am in the green club at my school and I would like to use the tools that I gain from being an advocate to encourage my peers to take more initiative in making a change.

Someone that inspires me is Sylvia A. Earle. She is a climate advocate and mainly works on saving the oceans. She has founded many programs and has dedicated her entire life to making a difference as well as educating others and helping them understand the importance of her work. She started getting involved when she was just 16, just like I am right now. She inspires me because she showed that after hard work and dedication one can truly make a change. I want to have even half as much of an impact as her in my lifetime and I want to put myself out there to make a change. She is also such an inspiration because she believes in teaching others what she knows and helping them learn. A lot of people in my community do not care as much about the environment as they should, and I want to help people understand why this is such an urgent issue and why everyone should play a role in helping. Overall, Sylvia is a great inspiration to a teen like me because she started where I am now and provides hope for the change that I can make in the future.