Melati Wijsen is a world-renowned activist, environmentalist, and youth leader from Indonesia, who has gone against the current every day since she was 12 years old when she co-founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags.

Now at 19, she is co-founder of three organizations: Bye Bye Plastic Bags, Mountains Mamas, and Youthtopia. 52 Hertz host Petrice Jones and Melati discuss youth empowerment, ways traditional education has failed students, and if she’s sacrificed a ‘normal’ childhood.

Only have a few minutes? Skim episode nine’s transcript.

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A team of seven grandmothers in New Caledonia are proof that you can be an ocean activist at any age. Dubbed the “Fantastic Grandmothers," these women, all in their sixties and seventies, spend their time helping scientists study the elusive greater sea snake. The venomous greater sea snake can reach nearly five feet in length, but that doesn't deter these grandmas from diving and documenting the sea snakes in the Baie des Citrons, a bay in New Caledonia. Together, these women have completed hundreds of surveys by snorkel, discovering far more sea snakes than the scientists ever expected to find. As of 2019, this motley crew of seven retirees had cataloged 250 snakes.

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