How African mythology is changing the environmental movement with Atwooki

Black Earth Podcast

In our final conversation of Season 2, Environmentalism Reimagined, we meet with Atwooki, creator of Yuniya.

Named after her grandmother, Yuniya is a storytelling platform using African mythology to educate children, parents and caregivers about climate change and Earth care.

Join us in this inspirational conversation as we explore how African mythology and storytelling is making climate action and ‘joyful activism’ more relatable, empowering and culturally relevant.

Through reclaiming African knowledge and building relationships across generations, Yuniya is bringing conversations on climate change, out from policy spaces and street protests into homes and community centres, where they belong.

This is an episode of active hope, enjoy!

Episode time stamps

00:00 - Intro to episode

02:52 - Atwooki’s relationship with nature

06:23 - How a conversation with her son, led Atwooki to create Yuniya

15:11 - What Yuniya do

20:04 - The life-changing impact of Yuniya on children, parents and caregivers
23:31 - How Yuniya has empowered a boy to lead a campaign to change the world map

28:35 - The importance of community education spaces in black liberation movements

30:38 - Marion shares a framework to define what growth looks like in social change

34:05 - Lessons on how we can engage children on climate change and joyful activism in an empowering way

39:48 - How to support black parents and caregivers of black children to feel empowered in Earth care

46:51 - Why the binary of ‘individual action versus systemic change’ limits our possibilities to engage everybody

52:16 - Atwooki’s recommendations to policy-makers

54:31 - How to support Atwooki and Yuniya

01:01:00 - How to support Black Earth

Support Atwooki and Yuniya

Yuniya - https://yuniya.com/pages/home

Support Black Earth Podcast

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Song credits

The Kora music in this episode is courtesy of Malamin and Yuniya platform

Resource mentioned in the episode

A framework on measuring impact in social change (Scaling Up, Scaling Out, Scaling Deep) by Michele-lee Moore, Darcy Riddell, and Dan Vocisano

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298971574_Scaling_Out_Scaling_Up_Scaling_Deep_Strategies_of_Non-profits_in_Advancing_Systemic_Social_Innovation