Hilary Savi, a climate educator, posing for a picture, during the COP30 Climate Conference in Belém,Brazil, November, 2025. Photo: Seth Onyango, bird story agency
With Africa facing some of the biggest climate risks on earth, a Beninese educator is betting the continent’s youngest citizens can carry the fight forward — as long as they have the tools.
Seth Onyango, bird story agency
Hilary Savi has been shuttling from one meeting room to the next at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, her notebook filling quickly with ideas gleaned from panels on gender, education, youth, and climate adaptation.
When she finally pauses beside a colleague from Argentina to catch her breath, the talk quickly turns to what unites them: teaching the next generation how to live with a changing planet.
For Savi, a soft-spoken climate educator from Benin, the fight against climate change doesn’t begin in government halls or conference rooms. It begins in classrooms and churches, with children who still see the world as something they can fix.
“The earlier they learn, the better,” she said. “Education is a powerful tool. Children have imagination and creativity — we just need to give them the tools, and they will make the rest.”
Savi represents the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, a global network active in 153 countries and representing 11 million girls. At COP30, she is one of the youngest delegates from West Africa, advocating for climate education to start as early as kindergarten.
In Benin, she leads the Girl-Led Action on Climate Change initiative — a program that uses games and interactive activities to teach children what climate change means and how it affects their lives. “When we go to schools or churches, we ask, ‘Do you know what climate change is?’” she said with a smile. “Most of them say no. So we start with the basics — weather, rain, sun — and we play games to help them see how things are changing.”
Her sessions rarely feel like lessons. Children draw pictures of the sky, play matching games with different weather symbols, or build cardboard forests to learn about trees and air quality. “We don’t have a formal way of teaching,” she explained. “It’s through play. They discover what climate change is and start noticing how it affects them.”
The approach works. In her community, children who once knew nothing about the environment now lead ecology clubs in their churches. “After church, they meet and talk about the planet,” Savi said. “They make plans for recycling or planting trees. They even talk about circular economy — every Sunday, they do something new.”
Across Africa, climate change is disrupting childhoods. According to UNICEF, children in Africa are among the most vulnerable in the world to climate impacts — nine out of ten live in countries facing “extreme risk.” Yet UNESCO data shows that fewer than one in five African school curricula include climate education in any meaningful form. That gap is what Savi wants to close.
“When I see children explaining to their parents why we must not burn plastic, I see hope,” she said. “Because they understand it in their own way.”
Her own journey into activism began by chance. “Before I joined the Girl Guides, I didn’t feel concerned by climate change,” she admitted. “It wasn’t really affecting me. But then my best friend brought me to the association, and I discovered the Girl-Led Action on Climate Change program.”
Through that program, Savi began hearing stories — farmers losing crops to drought, families displaced by floods, whole villages struggling to adapt. “I realized it was true. People around us are really suffering,” she said. “Because of human activities, the gifts that God gave us — the land, the water — are getting sick. I thought, if I can do something, even small, for the girls in my community, my school, my sister, or my cousin, I must do it.”
Now, she spends much of her time advocating for policy change. Her goal is to see climate education and gender equality integrated into national curricula — something few African governments have done comprehensively. “Girls are the most affected by climate change,” she said. “When there is drought, they walk longer distances for water. When there are floods, they miss school. So when leaders make decisions about climate, they must think about girls too.”
Her vision is simple but powerful, insisting that every child in Benin — and across Africa — should learn about the planet as naturally as they learn to read or cross the street. “When we were little, teachers told us to look right and left before crossing the road,” she recalled with a laugh. “In the same way, children must learn how to care for the planet. It should be part of life.”
Savi believes such early education could reshape how African societies approach climate change — not as an abstract global issue, but as something personal and local. “When we show children that the sun feels hotter than it did yesterday, they connect the dots,” she says. “They start asking why. That’s how change begins — with questions.”
In her community, that curiosity is already spreading. Her “ecology Sundays” have become a fixture in local churches, and teachers now borrow her games to use in classrooms.
At COP30, Savi’s message stands out amid the technical talk of emissions targets and financing. She speaks without jargon, but with conviction. “Sometimes people think climate action must be big,” she said. “But it can start with a game, a story, or a small group of children. That is enough to begin.”
Her focus may be on children, but her challenge is to adults — to policymakers, educators, and institutions. The African Development Bank estimates that Africa will need at least $3 trillion by 2030 to adapt to climate impacts, but without an informed generation to carry the fight forward, even that investment could fall short.
For Savi, the solution lies not only in money, but in mindset. “We can’t wait until they are adults to teach them,” she said. “By then, it will be too late.”
bird story agency
Leave a Reply