TORONTO -- Dealing with personal safety threats has given a Toronto environmentalist a stronger resolve to engage and empower young people to protect the planet.
Kehkashan Basu, 19, is an award winning “eco-warrior” with a mission to make communities safe, healthy and sustainable.
In an interview with CTV News Toronto ahead of International Women’s Day, she said being a woman has brought safety challenges.
“I’ve experienced severe cyber-bullying, I’ve faced stalking, death threats, threats of physical abuse,” Basu said.
“As I grew up I think I realized because of my gender and because of my age I was always going to face some kind of obstacle, of course because of the work that I’m doing, and that is where the passion came in to help me to continue my work.”
Basu’s drive to make a difference in the world began as a child.
“When I was seven years old I saw an image with a dead bird with its belly full of plastic, and I could not sleep at night because I was so deeply disturbed by what I saw,” Basu said.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain and agony the bird must have gone through before it died.”
She planted her first tree on her eighth birthday. At 12, she founded the Green Hope Foundation, an organization working with children to come up with environmental solutions in 15 countries.
Some of her projects include planting 500 trees at Earl Bales Park in North York, developing a clean-up program at a Syrian refugee camp, eliminating plastic at an orphanage in Suriname, removing trash from a beach in Oman and planting mangroves in five countries in the Middle East and South Asia.
In 2016, Basu won the International Children’s Peace Prize. In 2018, she was named one of the Canada’s Top 25 Women of Influence. She is also a United Nations Human Rights Champion.
Basu’s dream is to have Green Hope Foundation working in every country.
“With my organization, gender equality is such an integral part of sustainable development, and the enthusiasm that I’ve seen in the faces of the children, and especially the young girls that I work with, who face so many challenges every single day.”
“To still have that urge to make their own lives better, to make their communities, their whole world better, to me that’s the embodiment of what International Women’s Day is,” Basu said.
