The Power and Potential of a Goal

The Suzuki family spent 10 days in 1989, visiting the village of Aucre in the Brazilian rain forest. Severn Suzuki who was 9 years old at the time returned home fearful about the future of her new friends in Aucre. She formed a club called ECO (Environmental Children's Organization) when she returned home. These 10 year old girls spoke out about nature, people, the need to protect them and overtime they were invited to visit classes and give talks.

Severn had an even bigger goal and that goal involved taking ECO to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. With help from two philanthropists and a lot of fundraising of their own, over $13,000 was raised to help get them to Rio. These funds were also matched by her parents, David and Tara Suzuki.  

ECO rented a booth at the Earth Summit along with hundreds of other groups and talked to numerous people. These five girls from Canada were filmed and interviewed by reporters and made quite an impact. Severn was then invited to address a plenary session during the summit. With help from fellow ECO members, Severn wrote her speech and rehearsed it in the taxi ride to Rio Centro. She was the last to speak in front of a few hundred delegates.

This is some of what she said:

I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to realize, neither do you. You   don't know how to fix the holes in the ozone layer. You don't know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back a forest where there is now a desert. If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it...

In my country we make so much waste; we buy and throw away, buy and throw away. Yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to let go...

You teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us not to fight with others; to work things out; to respect others; to clean up our mess; not to hurt other creatures; to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do?...

My dad always says, "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grownups say you love us. I challenge you. Please, make your actions reflect your words.

I'm only a child, yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this Earth would be...

  Severn Cullis-Suzuki, age twelve, Earth Summit,
  Rio de Janeiro, June 1992


Spoken from the heart!


Michele Ward