Three Teenagers Changing the World for the Better

[Music] being an activist teacher or inventor doesn't always require experience for some young people it just takes bravery discover three inspirational teenagers who are changing the world in the heart of mexico city is a school exclusively for gifted children and at the heart of that school is a gifted 16 year old prodigy named daphne amazon [Music] daphne is a child prodigy who became the world's youngest psychologist at the age of 13. and forbes magazine named her one of mexico's most powerful women at 14 she received her master's in education and right now she is finishing a doctorate in law as if that wasn't enough daphne speaks english french latin and mandarin and finds time during the day to study them all did i say that she's only 16 yes she did it is estimated that there is over 1 million gifted children in mexico with a talent waiting to be tapped so daphne is committed to nurturing the vast talent of the gifted children of mexico that's why she teaches psychology at the school she once graduated from centro de atencion al talento [Music] [Music] for example there's this science wizkid who knows the entire periodic table like the back of his hand or this kid with a sharp memory that allows him to memorize every bone in the human body there is this six-year-old kid presenting on an interesting sometimes [Music] [Music] is [Music] science can make a big difference anywhere from just a simple reaction to a big experiment if you just find the right application science can't save the world my name is catanjali rao and i am 12 years old i'm a scientist i invented a device called tethys that detects lead and water faster than any other current techniques out there today i was appalled by the number of people affected by lead and water during the flint water crisis i wanted to do something to change this for the residents of flint and places like when all over the world my device includes a core device and a disposable cartridge with the carbon nanotube sensor you dip this disposable cartridge into the water you want to test you pull out your phone open up the tetanus application and connect over bluetooth to get the results of safe slightly contaminated or critical of lead levels in your water [Music] my advice to other kids who want to save the world is to not be afraid to try i failed like four or five times but i got back into the lab did it again and then it was like the aha moment when everything kind of started coming together and you know the device was born i think that science allows me to look at different approaches to solve world problems out there today it's important to take other people's problems and make something to help them with it mainly because we're all one big community and it's our duty to help other people greta is a 16 year old girl who has inspired thousands maybe even millions of people to stand up for both themselves and the climate she thought everything was going in the wrong direction and now she's become a really big role model for a lot of people i look up to her a lot because i think it's so cool what she's doing it's time that we actually stood up for the climate and did something instead of just sitting around the climb crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced and yet it has been ignored for decades the older people usually say that we owe it to the young people to give them hope but we don't want you to be hopeful we want you to panic they say that they love their children above all else and yet they are stealing their future in front of their very eyes [Music] the leaders should know that change is coming whether they like it or not one in four americans is skeptical of all the effects of climate change and thinks this issue's been exaggerated environmental annihilation is coming because we've been evil you know what this is it's a snowball some people don't believe the climate crisis they don't understand that it's real and i i have to say that i understand them in a way because in the beginning when i first found out about this i doubt that it was true because if it was true then we wouldn't be talking about anything else that would be our first priority but it's not people say it's like an abstract threat in the future but it's happening now we can already see the changes we already have increased the temperature above pre-industrial levels 1.2 degrees and everything is happening very fast now we need to do something and act as if we were in a crisis because otherwise people won't understand that we are in a crisis so greta thanks to be with us hi uh you said many times i was like an invisible girl before now you are very famous everybody is here with you and they want you for the nobel prize how did you reach this at this point in august last year i decided that this was enough i sat myself down on the ground outside the swedish parliament and i schooled strike for the climate i have said that i will continue to school strike every friday until sweden is in line with paris agreements that may take a long time i will have to be patient and to remind myself of why i'm doing this the symbolism of the school strike is that since you adults don't give a damn about my future i won't either why should we care for our future when we might not have one and why should we bother to learn facts when facts don't matter in this society it's absurd that young people will have to skip school and risk their own education because they are scared of not having a future and i think that is a very strong message you uh have heard about uh greater toonberg greta thornberg greta tunberg greta tune by greta tumbo thank you very much for joining us this morning at first i was all alone and then people started joining me and then it started spreading to different places and then different countries and then different continents and then it became global in december the u.n had a climate change conference and there i i held some speeches we have run out of excuses and we are running out of time i think that was also when more people started to found out about the school strikes and then at the end of january i was invited to the world economic forum our house is on fire and also there i held a speech which also went i think viral and those two i think both those two were tipping points of this movement it has just escalated and it's going so fast i i can't even keep up with it anymore now there's hundreds and thousands of children who are striking from school for their future when i was 11 i became very depressed i stopped eating and i stopped talking and i stopped going to school it had a lot to do with the climate and the environment i started making changes in my own life like stop flying stop eating meat and dairy and stop buying new things in order to be able to look myself in the eye i need to to do something myself i started talking with my parents after a while they decided to do that as well [Music] before i started the school strike i was that person who who was invisible i never spoke unless i had to and also i have asperger's syndrome i'm a bit different from everyone else when you have aspergers you also tend to have a capacity of being very focused and interested in some subjects and that allowed me to to focus on one thing for a very long time i think that if i wouldn't have had aspergers i don't think i would have started the school strike and i don't think i would have been interested in the climate at all because if i would have been like everyone else i just continued like before not thinking twice about this and but now i i can't do that my conscience doesn't allow me to do [Music] that [Music] i think this movement could become very big and i think that we have just seen the beginning because more and more people are going to start realize the emergency of the situation and they will they will get angry and they will want to do something about it especially young people who will understand eventually that their future is being taken from them many people say that we are too young to do this we shouldn't do this and i agree we shouldn't have to do this but in the situation we are in now we feel like we have to do this because we won't accept you risking our future if the adults won't take responsibility then we will have to [Music] you

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 186,006

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, New Releases, Great Big Reels, Biography & Profile, biography, profile, teens, teenagers, fint, Michigan, activist, gifted, Greta Thunberg, Dafne Almazán, Gitanjali Rao, water crisis, global warming

Id: 6gIK_XoB8so

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020