Maria Kolesnikova
MoveGreen – Kyrgystan
Maria Kolesnikova is the director of MoveGreen, a youth environmental movement in the Kyrgyz Republic. Together with her colleagues, she promotes environmental awareness across the country and advocates for more and bolder environmental-friendly policies. During COVID-19, she has taken her activism online, and for Earth Day, a social media campaign is challenging people to take seven actions for the environment while they stay at home.
Maria is a young professional with over five years of experience in the area of journalism and media. In her latest position of the President of youth climate change and environmental movement, she is actively pioneering activities in the area of environmental protection, raising awareness about this issue through media campaigns and direct work with youth of the Kyrgyz Republic. Maria has also led the volunteering work in the area of women and children’s rights protection. Additionally she has helped with development of food bank in Bishkek to support care leavers and vulnerable families. As a result in one month the team collected and gave out more than 30 food parcels. These experiences allowed Maria to develop essential skills of multimedia campaigning, fundraising and development of strategy communications.
Together with the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Kyrgyzstan, she worked in rural areas to raise people’s awareness on what to do in case of an emergency and how to reduce the risks posed by natural disasters. The project’s success led her to become the director of the Kyrgyz MoveGreen movement.
Under Maria’s leadership, MoveGreen launched the Aba.kg mobile application, which informs Bishkek residents about the quality of their air. The application has been downloaded by over 3000 people.
MoveGreen’s much needed work is timely. Across the country, awareness about the need to act on environmental issues, especially pollution, is spreading rapidly and having a ripple effect. This year, for example, an environmental activist is set to open a school for climate leaders. Meanwhile, the first climate forum in 2019 brought together 400 participants, many of them young people looking for new tools and knowledge, explains Maria.
Through their flagship educational initiative, known as the “School Breathes Easily” project, MoveGreen has spearheaded efforts to engage school children to take care of the environment. Through lectures and laboratory experiments facilitated by volunteers and activists, the initiative has mobilized children in the capital.
“It was interesting to see how children with zero knowledge about plants, biodiversity, air or climate became so knowledgeable in just six months. They learned about the sources of air pollution and about the different ways to solve the problem. If tomorrow these children become leaders of our country, we will no longer need to worry about the future.”
Video 1) UN Champion of the Earth
Video 2) Introduction
