Panel: Solito to Solidarity

A worldwide panel discussion on storytelling as a way to process climate fear and grief, resolve conflict and imagine a way forward together.

Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman have been on a five-year journey to listen to the stories of people who are searching for creative solutions to climate crises in their regions of the world. Their forthcoming book, Last Chance Road, is an urgent present-tense story documenting their journey to interview individuals on the frontlines of climate change. “We take readers along with us to listen to climate-displaced people and defenders of the environment in four remote regions. The interviews are conducted on the ground and via online platforms during the coronavirus pandemic. We’re letting these stories take us where they will, listening rather than prescribing. Last Chance Road leads us to Yucatan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, back home to California and converge in Glasgow Scotland in November of 2021, where the narrators convene at the People’s COP26 to reflect on the global climate crisis, and to envision a shared future.”

Steven Mayers is a professor of English and oral historian, and Jonathan Freedman is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author. What brought them together was our mutual passion for the human rights of migrants and the power of stories to bring about change. From 2014 to 2019, they joined forces to travel across Mexico and the United States listening to the life stories of young people who had fled extreme poverty, gang violence and domestic violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. They collected fifteen of these oral histories in Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America, which is part of the Voice of Witness oral history book series on human rights.

Pedro Uc Be is a poet, teacher, and defender of the Maya land in Yucatan, Mexico. He is a member of the Assembly of Defenders of the Maya Múuch ‘Xíinbal Territory, an organization that aims to defend its territory from the dispossession applied by mega-companies of renewable energy in the Yucatan Peninsula. Pedro is currently a professor at the School of Literary Creation of the State Center of Fine Arts (CEBA), a campus where he also studied. He also graduated as a theologian from the San Pablo Presbyterian Theological Seminary in 1985 in the city of Merida. He has a degree in Secondary Education in the area of ​​Social Sciences from the Escuela Normal Superior de Campeche. He was a professor of Philosophy and History since 1993 in the city of Ticul, Yucatán at the José Dolores Rodríguez Tamayo Educational Center (CERT).

Anahí Haizel De la Cruz Martín is a Maya photographer. She was born in Ticul, Yucatán, on July 25, 1993. She studied high school at the Rodríguez Tamayo Educational Center. On March 7, 2018, within the framework of International Women’s Day, she participated in a group exhibition Mujeres, Movement and Perspective, on the main trellis of the State Center of Fine Arts of Mérida, Yucatán. On August 9, she was invited to the collective exhibition The memories of the Mayan Territory at the Museo Maya Santa Cruz Xbáalam Naj in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo, Mexico. She was a fellow of the Young Creators 2019-2020 program of the Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) in the Visual Arts Photography Area. She has published her photographs in the magazines La Ojarasca, Revista Sinfín, in the Italian magazine La Macchina Sognante, as well as in the Mexico News Daily newspaper and the Diario de Yucatán. Haizel accompanies and documents processes of struggle for the vindication of the Mayan language and culture as a member of the Assembly of Defenders of the Maya Múuch ’Xíinbal Territory. She has shared his photographs on Facebook and on her blog for the outreach of the communities

Seifu Assegid was born and raised in the Eastern part of Ethiopia in Diredawa city. At age six, he lost his father in the Ethio-Somali War. His widowed mother was forced to fell trees to survive. Seifu then went to Cuba at age eight on scholarship as an orphan to study at a government-run primary and junior high school. Seifu returned from Cuba to finish high school with his sister in Tigray, where he witnessed the severe malnutrition crisis there in the ‘80’s. Currently, Seifu works for Save the Children as a Roving Humanitarian Communication Coordinator. Seifu earned a Diploma in environmental Health Science from Gondar College of Medical Science and a BA in Disaster Risk Management and Sustainable Development from Yardstick International University. Seifu’s photographs and stories have appeared in popular television programs, newspapers, and magazines including the UK Daily Telegraph, Aljazeera TV, and media outlets in Australia and elsewhere. He has been voice to the voiceless by sharing their stories for donors and members of Save the Children. His work mainly focuses on people affected by climate change, and is informed by his personal experiences as a child and adult. 

Lipi Rahman is one of the founders directly involved in the evolving of Badabon Sangho. She has been supporting organization with money, labor and suggestion. She has worked as Executive Director of Badabon Sangho since its inception on volunteering basis. Currently she is acting as Executive Director and General Secretary of Executive Committee. She worked with non-profit development sector for last 20 years with different capacities. She was born and brought up in an educated Muslim family. She earned a Master’s in Political Science from University of Dhaka. She has a strong passion and commitment for the vulnerable women. She is single lady, spending most of the time for organization wellbeing.

Mamun Ur Rashid is working with a national women’s rights organisation i.e. ‘Badabon Sangho’ in Bangladesh, working for human rights and climate justice. He was born and brought up in the southwest coastal region at the belt of the Bay of Bengal, where people are continuously fighting with climate induced violence and displacement, mobilizing, organizing, and educating vulnerable women, equipping them with tested tools and methods and helping them to be resilient. This is his day-to-day work.

This event is part of Everybody’s Climate 2025: Connect with others to address the climate crisis in ways that are meaningful to you, from poetry and music to science and practical action.