What the YELL is going on?

The climate crisis has always been an issue that I found hard to resonate with since it is often presented as a distant, unfixable problem and underscored with apocalyptic claims. I am also worried that certain communities fail to acknowledge their climate privilege at times since they are often untroubled by climate change, given their lack of personal experience of its most severe effects. Meanwhile, although they contributed the least to the climate crisis, the poor ultimately bear the brunt of its impacts. Given my formal education in economics, politics, and public administration, I also felt that there are more pressing social issues such as poverty, corruption, inequality, etc.

However, everything changed following the catastrophic 2021-2022 Malaysian Floods, which affected my home and locality and were declared a ‘once in a century’ disaster by government officials. My parents had to dip into their hard-earned savings to either repair or replace damaged appliances, furniture, and some parts of our home. Nevertheless, we still consider ourselves fortunate as we had the means to shoulder the expensive costs. Some of my less-privileged neighbours had to take out loans to fund these repair costs, while others chose to put off repairs altogether despite the health and safety hazards in their damaged homes.

From Climate Apathy to Climate Action

Unsurprisingly, many scientists, experts, and activists connected the occurrence of these floods to extreme weather attributed to climate change. It was only then that I slowly began to view climate change as an urgent critical social issue on par with poverty, inequality, and other issues I was passionate about. Similar to the experiences of some members of my local community, many other poor communities and nations throughout the world are unable to mitigate the impacts of climate change or recover from them. Hence, it became clear that I had to overcome my climate apathy if I wanted a safer and healthier future for myself and everyone around me.

Yet, I still felt uncertain about my role as a young adult hailing from the humble village of Kampung Raja Uda, Malaysia in addressing the present crisis due to my lack of experience and exposure to climate change and environmental issues. So, when I stumbled upon the Youth Environment Living Labs (YELL) internship offered by UNICEF Malaysia I decided to give it a shot, although it was an opportunity that required me to step out of my comfort zone.

Learning to YELL

YELL Fact: YELL is a partnership between young people and local climate and environmental organizations convened by UNDP and UNICEF Malaysia, supported by Amanah Lestari Alam (ALAM). YELL helps local youth find their voice in environmental action and amplifies ongoing sustainability efforts among young people. YELL works with its partners, including the local NGO and the Ministry of Youth and Sports Malaysia, to champion the climate agenda among the local youth.

At YELL, I seized various opportunities to engage with youth from different socio-economic backgrounds across Malaysia. Through my engagements, I observed that those passionate about climate change and environmental issues were often in similar shoes as me since they were unsure how to act on them too. Although some knew what to do and came up with innovative localised ideas, they still struggled to test and pilot them out in the real world as they lacked the experience, skills, and capital to do so. Besides that, I also noticed a significant disparity in awareness and knowledge of climate change between urban and rural youth across the different regions in Malaysia.

These takeaways made me appreciate YELL’s two-pronged approach to be both a facilitator and enabler for youth-led climate action. In 2021, YELL set up yell.my to act as a platform for bringing together diverse youth leaders and environmental organisations across Malaysia. It features a directory of local heroes and organisations working on the environment and climate agenda. The stories and experiences shared there served as both a source of inspiration and knowledge sharing for budding climate change and environmental champions.

Having understood what YELL is all about, my internship culminated with my involvement in the YELL Launch. On 2 August 2022, YELL had its inaugural launch to celebrate the work with its network partners since 2021 and to announce its new programmes for 2022-2024. My primary role was to lead the curation for the YELL Exhibition, which was an integral part of the launch event. It was an endeavour to decide what to showcase as all components of the exhibition had to tell YELL’s story and purpose holistically and coherently.