The Nation-Building Youth’s Award
Kehkashan Basu
Founder of a youth organization, GREEN HOPE FOUNDATION
In 2012, at the age of 12, Ms. Kehkashan Basu founded the GREEN HOPE FOUNDATION, a youth organization based in Canada which seeks to provide a networking platform to children and young people, especially girls, to carry forward the Rio Conventions on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification through several environmental workshops and ground level projects. These include the promotion of gender equality, climate justice, stopping land degradation, biodiversity conservation, waste segregation and reversing land degradation. The Foundation now has 80 thousand members across 25 countries in the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia as well as in India, Brazil, USA and Canada. She firmly believes in the power of youth who is the main group to change the world and make it a better place to live. Nowadays, she is one of the most influential people in her peer group. New generations around the world are inspired by her work concerning environmental and human rights efforts.