Kalkidan Esayas PhD (ELP 2023) | Director, World Vision Ethopia

I was born and grew up in Ethiopia, East Africa and was raised by a brave single mom that contributed three successful daughters to the world. As a kid, I earned top marks at school. When I joined to university, I started to get more curious about what I was going to study. I remembered the moment that made me to decide to join department of Biology. On day one, all the department heads of the university gave the overall information about their respective departments. I was listening carefully. The department head of Biology started explaining about the courses and its impact. He concluded his speech as” is there something bigger than life? Then I asked myself, what could be then? My mind said “Nothing is special other than life”. Then, I decided and studied biology.

After I completed my BSc in biology, I became a lecturer and teaching college courses on biodiversity, wildlife conservation, ecology, and the like. I was lucky to have the opportunity to visit different protected areas, parks, and zoos throughout Ethiopia. Through these experiences, I realized that nature is a blessing that we often fail to care for and appreciate. I asked myself, “If I don’t do my part to protect nature, who will? If not now, when?” I decided to specialize in the field of ecology, earning an MSc and then a PhD in ecology from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. And that is how I came to be an ecologist.

Through this process, I realized that little priority was being given to nature in my country and that trying to solve ecological problems was seen as a luxury. Less attention was given from the people, even from so-called “professionals.” I got also some resistance from professionals as no one was cooperative while I tried to organize events, trainings and conferences. Besides, nobody was interested to sponsor or support me. I remembered the moment that I went to one profit making organization to request sponsorship. After serious discussion with the manager of the organization, he asked me “Would you tell me the net profit after those event or training?” I said that “our profit will be safe, clean and conserved country’’ and the he refused my request. I was so frustrated since no one was by my side and people didn’t realize that climate change could knock the door of every one across the board. This pushback inspired me to teach youth about nature, how to conserve it, and why it is our responsibility.

I started volunteering and trained more than 10,000 young people through online by using a telegram platform. I also prepared educational materials about the environment in English and local language (Amharic) to make sure that everyone could read and understand them. I organized events to sensitize the community to environmental issues. This road was not easy, but hard work, determination, and commitment made it possible.

After these ups and downs, the U.S. Department of State awarded me the opportunity to represent my country through the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) with the thematic area “Volunteerism and Civic Action.” I visited five states of US including Washington D.C, Virginia, Utah and Louisiana and discussed with the organizations working on Voluntarism. Some of the organization that I visited were universities, high schools, health centers, NGOs, private sectors and faith-based organizations. This gave me more insight about how voluntarism has been implemented in US. I was so humbled! That was one of my proudest moments, one that showed me that hard work always pays off when you stick to a goal.

After my IVLP trip to the U.S., I felt that I could make a bigger impact, if I continued to work hard. I conducted an assessment to investigate the biggest problems in conservation of natural resources in my country and found that there was a serious leadership knowledge gap, even among the professionals working on climate change, conservation, biodiversity, and natural resource management. This affected my thinking and professional journey once again. I asked myself, “Am I a good leader?” I took different leadership courses to fill gaps in my knowledge before moving on to become a master trainer and consultant for both governmental and non-governmental organizations working on environmental issues. Another good development…Cheers! After a competitive process, I was awarded a Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley-a true nexus of environment and leadership. I consider myself so incredibly lucky.

The world we all live in is so unpredictable. Things can happen suddenly and unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, but in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence. Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. To better understand life, we need to know all about its nucleus: nature. We depend on our environment to live, and we must do a better job of protecting it.

Let us protect our Mother Earth. We don’t have an extra one.