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Victoria Ottoa (blomvegetarier)
Female, 24 from Valdivia, Chile
Joined TIG: Mar 4, 2005
My name is Victoria. I was born in Talcahuano, a harbor in southern Chile. Throughout my childhood, we traveled quite extensively across the country, living in Linares, Calama, and Traiguen. Once, when I was 11, we lived near a military base, and my puppy, Suyi, came home one day with blood all over her face and body. She died three days later. I found out that she had run to pick up a grenade that had been thrown, which then exploded. That’s when I decided to become a vegetarian and to protect animals and every other kind of life.
Another experience which really fueled my passion for environmental conservation and wildlife protection occurred in 2004, when the Vadivia pulp mill belonging to CELCO, Latin America’s second largest paper pulp manufacturer, began to contaminate the Cruces River. A serious ecological disaster affecting the Carlos Andwandter Nature Sanctuary was brewing, and black necked swans, an emblem of Valdivia, were dying as a result. By February 2005, it was confirmed that the number of swans had decreased from 6000 to 300. Accompanied by the massive wipeout of aquatic vegetation, it was verging on the collapse of the entire ecosystem. However, the Angelini Group, which owned CELCO, were influencing the authorities not to take any action to protect the wetland or repair the damages, even once they confirmed that the pollution was detrimental to the health of the local population. This pushed me, and some 4000 other people in our community, to protest and fight against the Angelini Group and the government on behalf of the environment and for the people’s health.
I got really involved with the youth section of Acción por los Cisnes (APC), the civic group created in November 2004 in response to contamination of the Cruces River, which aims to defend the life and health of the people and the ecosystems of Valdivia. As I was surfing the Internet to find other youth organizations with which we could collaborate to communicate our problem, I found GYAN, and then TakingITGlobal. TIG was perfect for what I was looking for and provided access to both information and people. I love the action guides, the TIGblog, and the fact that we can connect with people from all over the world to work together. I have made many wonderful friends on TakingITGlobal who are so knowledgeable and dedicated, and they have inspired me to continue with my work to make change happen in my community.
When I signed up as a member in 2005, what I needed most was a guide, and I got it with TakingITGlobal. At the time, I had ideas but I just didn’t know where or how to start, and I didn’t know how to motivate others to take action as well. Through TIG, I have managed to gather a lot of information, mostly through exchanging experiences with other TIG members who have organized similar projects. I tried then to transfer all the knowledge and best practices that I had gained through TIG to my work with APC. We started to mobilize youth: we went to schools to spread awareness, we garnered support from the university, and we organized an event where we gathered many environmental organizations, school groups, politicians, social leaders, sustainable architects, actors, musicians, etc. together to share our ideas, our projects, and our materials. Through TIG, not only was I able to determine how I could concretely achieve my goals, I was also able to update youth from all over the world on what was happening in Valdivia and what we were doing to fight it.
Now that I am a mother and my son is almost 1 year old, all the work I do is for him: I want to see him grow up in a world with no environmental pollution and no poverty. I had no idea about the MDGs until I joined TIG, and I’m glad to have discovered them because they represent what I have been dreaming of for my son and for the rest of the world. As I became more informed on the MDGs, I formed a youth group to work towards raising awareness on these goals within Chile. I received my MDG action guide and toolkit from TakingITGlobal, and I have been using them ever since to spread awareness about the goals and the campaign to students and schools.
I never thought that youth could do so much for their countries until I joined TakingITGlobal. Sometimes, it seems that we work more seriously than our adult leaders, and that makes me smile: knowing that we can make change and that they cannot ignore us. TIG gives us everything we want or need to take action, and you can feel its impact resonate no matter where you are.
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Vicky
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