A New Global Content & Music Festival Initiative for Youth
Our Global Ambassadors
The Inspiring & Dedicated Youth We Look Up To
Lilly Platt
Founder of Lillys Plastic Pickup CAMPAIGN
At only the age of 11, Lilly has achieved more than the average adult and has already established herself as one of the world’s leading environmental activists. This impressive young lady started Lillys Plastic Pickup at the age of 7, after noticing plastic on the ground while walking one day with her grandfather in Holland. After looking up the dangers of plastic, Lilly was sad to find out about the horrendous impact plastic has on animals, so she decided that enough was enough and that it was time to take action into her own hands. Lilly’s goal is to educate and inform the world, including global politicians and policymakers, about the detrimental effects of climate change and plastic pollution! She is among top 100 influencers tackling plastic pollution in the world and a youth ambassador for many organisations.
Julie Schummer
FRIDAY FOR FUTURE Activist
Julie lives in Belgium and is an inspiring and impressive young climate change activist and part of the bigger #FridaysforFuture movement. Fridays For Future is a movement that began in August 2018, after 15 years old Greta Thunberg sat in front of the Swedish parliament every school day for three weeks, to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis. The hashtags #FridaysForFuture, #YouthForClimate and #ClimateStrike have the past year spread all over the world and many both young people and adults are weekly protesting outside of their parliaments and local city halls.
Hannah Testa
Founder of Hannah4Change
Hannah Testa is a sustainability advocate, international speaker and founder of Hannah4Change, an organization dedicated to fighting issues that impact the planet. She is a vegan who enjoys healthy living and loves to share her passion with others. She excels at partnering with businesses and government to influence them to develop more sustainable practices. Hannah has received numerous honors and awards, including the Teen Earth Day Hero by CNN, the Young Superhero for Earth Award by Captain Planet, the Action for Nature International Young Eco-Hero Award, the Gloria Barron Prize, and many others. She is a board member, adviser, and youth ambassador for several organizations.
Lukas von Horbatschewsky
ACTOR
Lukas is a rising, young actor known for his portrayal of David in the popular German teen show, DRUCK. The show is based on the Norwegian web drama, SKAM, and tells the stories of teens and the various issues dominating their daily lives. In season 3, the main character, Matteo, falls in love with Lukas’s character, a pansexual transgender boy. Their love story deals with the conflict of gender and sexuality as well as the psychological coping mechanisms that the characters face, and it's positively impacted numerous teenagers all over Europe and the rest of the world. This past year alone, DRUCK has had close to 60 million views on YouTube. The show has successfully managed to highlight and realistically capture the importance of young people’s struggles in today’s society, and the ways in which to best deal with these struggles in constructive and healthy ways. Outside the show, Lukas is dedicated and committed to highlighting and educating his global audiences about the importance of the LGBTQ+ community and mental health.
Haile Thomas
FOUNDER OF HAPPY
Haile Thomas is 18 years old, an international speaker, wellness + compassion activist, vegan food & lifestyle content creator, the youngest Certified Integrative Health Coach in the United States, and the founder/CEO of the nonprofit HAPPY
(Healthy Active Positive Purposeful Youth). Haile founded HAPPY when she was 12 years old to redefine wellness education & provide peer to peer free/affordable plant-based nutrition and culinary education in under served/ at-risk communities, as well as in schools and through annual summer camps.
Haile has personally engaged over 40,000 kids through her non-profit work and speaking around the world since beginning her activism in 2010. She was inspired to pursue this passion after her family successfully reversed her fatherʼs type-2 diabetes without the use of medication, only healthy eating and lifestyle choices, and upon learning that kids were also increasingly being diagnosed with conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. At the core of Haileʼs activism, projects, and initiatives is to create safe spaces to engage, educate, and empower her peers to fuel & take care of their bodies with kindness, step into their power and voices, and see everyday as an opportunity to create change.
Haile and her work have been featured on the Today Show, Food Network, CNN, Buzzfeed, MTV, NowThis, VegNews, Brit+Co, Dr. Oz, Teen Vogue, Fortune, O Magazine, and Experience Life Magazine to name a few.
Elisa Del Genio
ACTRESS
Elisa is a talented and rising young actress best known for her lead role as Elena “Lenù” in HBO’s critically acclaimed TV show, My Brilliant Friend, based on the New York Times Bestseller. This half Italian/half Norwegian trailblazer won numerous awards for her captivating performence, including the 2019 International Ennio Flaiano Award as well as the 2019 Experince Award at the Giffoni Film Festival.
Elisa has practiced classical and modern dance since she was three years old; she is an active skier and likes scuba diving. Elisa is pretty studious, but in free times loves to create, draw and write. More recently she started to edit short films. She has great ease in working in groups and enhancing experiences with others and team work.
Outside of filming, Elisa is dedicated and committed to raising awareness about the importance of education, power of knowledge and global culture.
David Wicker
FrIDAY FOR FUTURE ACTIVIST
David Wicker is a 14-year-old climate activist from Northern Italy. David started Friday for Future Strikes the first week of January 2019, and has not stopped since. We asked David why he strikes and why this is so important to him. David said, “it’s because it is the only way I get to raise my voice since I am not allowed to vote, and because it's the most efficient way of putting pressure on our government and demand positive change. I demand climate justice and equity. I demand that our government does everything it can to maintain global temperature rise under 1.5°C, compared to preindustrial levels, and I demand that our government listens to the best unified science currently available. I used to have a normal life, without activism and many passions. But my life can no longer be normal, especially now that I am aware that I may not have a planet where I will be able to raise a future family”.
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Elsa Mengistu
ZERO HOUR ACTIVIST
Elsa Mengistu is a 17-year-old high school student from North Carolina. She is an avid organizer and activist who started at her work in middle school focusing on human rights. Advocating for many issues like racial justice, lgbt+ equality, and women’s rights she began working with local organizations and school clubs to make an impact. As she continued to study social justice it became apparent that all social issues are interconnected which then led her to working on climate justice with Zero Hour and organizing the Global Youth Climate March. She now serves as the Director of Operations and Logistics at Zero Hour and coordinates logistics/programming in order to gain support for the Youth Climate Movement, and to see how the youth of the movement can support and uplift others. She also serves on the Youth Advisory Board for Young Voices for the Planet, an organization that highlights kids from across the world and what they are doing to make a difference through various documentaries. She continues to work within her local and international community through various clubs and by building coalitions of youth spanning several continents and social issues, in hopes of empowering young people and changing the world.