In 1992, 12-year-old Canadian Severn Cullis-Suzuki spoke at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio. She was twelve years old and had raised all the money to travel to the delegation, five thousand miles from her home, herself. ‘Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organizers, reporters or politicians – but really you are you are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles- and all of you are somebody’s child. I’m only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong.’ With passion and elegance, she appealed to the world leaders not as politicians, but as the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. The world leaders engaged with the speech on a personal level because of they way
