Bringing the issues of sustainable living to young people and encouraging action

“Otesha” is Ki-Swahili for “to cause to dream”. The Otesha Project was dreamed up by two young Canadians, Jessica Lax and Jocelyn Land-Murphy, whilst on a gap year in Kenya. They were concerned about inequalities in the world and about how young people might become more aware of the issues of poverty and inequality and address these through taking simple actions in their own lives.

They prepared a play which talked about “Morning Choices” – the decisions you could make between 8am and 9am , whilst getting up and preparing for the day ahead which would have a more positive impact on the world. The choices concern these topics: water, clothing, media, coffee, food and transport. We intend to add four further choices for the UK programme covering: energy use, recycling, sanitation and personal well-being.

Jessica and Jocelyn got together a group of young volunteers. They cycled 5,500 miles around Canada in 2003 to take the message out to young Canadians and to get them involved in helping create a more sustainable, fairer world. They have continued to develop the programme, set up local groups of young people to promote ideas for sustainable living, and begun to inspire parallel initiatives in other countries.

The Otesha Project has won multiple awards from organisations such as The International Youth Foundation, Environment Canada, and Canadian Living magazine.  The Otesha Project has been featured in Our Time is Now, a book profiling young leaders around the world, a Canadian documentary series called, Make Some Noise, and received national and international media attention.  The project was also showcased at a Global Youth Action Network international conference, where there has been a lot of international interest with parallel initiatives beginning to get started in some other countries. Jessica Lax, one of the two founders, was a speaker to the Civicus World Forum in Glasgow in June 2006.

We have brought The Otesha Project to the UK. The programme was launched in summer 2007 with support from the Vodafone UK Foundation and the V foundation. The issues of sustainable living are relevant around the globe. Using the Otesha approach and engaging young people to inspire young people seems an obvious way of addressing these issues. Otesha organises bike rides in the UK (6-week and 2-week tours) where around 20 young people travel to schools, community centres and youth projects  to perform an interactive play, have discussions, get the audience to pledge to take action on environmental issues and even start a local Otesha group. The bike tours are an amazing experience, and provide wonderful training in environmental leadership

Find out about the Otesha Project in the UK; join in as a volunteer; come on a bike ride; start a local group; download the free UK edition of the Otesha Handbook; or explore getting a green job. Contact Otesha at: www.otesha.org.uk

See what the Otesha Project has done in Canada: www.otesha.ca. You can also download the Canadian version of the Otesha Handbook free from this website.