Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 announced that a foundation she set up would donate €150,000 ($175,000) to assist people affected by climate change in Africa.
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Oil Change International and Solar Sister would each receive €50,000, the Greta Thunberg Foundation said.
The statement said that Africa was “one of the most vulnerable regions for the impacts of the climate crisis, as heatwaves, droughts and floods intensify with rising global temperatures.”
The funds to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement were to support disaster relief work across Africa.
Solar Sister assists local women entrepreneurs in Tanzania and Nigeria to build clean, solar-powered businesses, while Oil Change International combats “harmful oil and gas projects across Africa,” the statement added.
“We are in a global emergency, which affects all of us.
“But everyone is not suffering its consequences equally.
“Africa is being disproportionately hit by the climate crisis, despite contributing to it among the least,” Thunberg said.
The 17-year-old climate activist inspired the global movement to draw attention to climate change by skipping school on Fridays.
She staged her first school strike in August 2018.
The funds announced on Wednesday originate from the €1 million prize for humanity, which the Portuguese Gulbenkian Foundation awarded to Thunberg in July.
At the time, Thunberg said the prize money would be donated to organisations and projects working to combat climate change and ecological degradation especially in the Global South, where people were most affected.
