Daisy's passion is to safeguard the future of our planet. She lives by these quotes: "Everything happens for a reason. If one door closes, it’s because there is another one waiting to open!" -Daisy Kendrick (CLICK TO TWEET)
Daisy's Story
Daisy Kendrick, born on May 16th, 1994, United Kingdom, grew up in Spain mostly, studied in the United States, currently living in London.
She's very passionate about educating young people and teachers about climate change and coding. As well as hosting hackathons and global challenges in areas most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and developing real-world solutions.
In 2015, She did an internship at the United Nations in New York working for the Permanent Mission of Grenada. It was an exciting year as they were introducing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and working for an island meant that she was sent to a lot of meetings about climate change and oceans.
It was there where she first really learned and realized that actually climate change is the greatest threat to our generation. After work, she would chat to friends about these topics, and they also had no idea how critical and fragile our planet was and especially how vulnerable people are to the consequences of climate change.
The first idea was to create awareness through music – she ended up commissioning some writers in London to create a song called We Are The Oceans. Later partnered with Joss Stone and off the back of Joss being involved they launched a global YouTube influencer campaign where lots of YouTubers ended up creating their versions of the Oceans song and encouraging their audiences to do better. It became somewhat viral, and that’s how the idea to create an organization and have a lasting impact was born. Check out the full playlist with Youtubers HERE and here's the We Are The Oceans song.
Ocean Generation is a global collective created by youth, for youth, to safeguard the future of our planet. To have a world free from climate injustice, where no young adults’ capabilities are limited by climate change. As an organization, Ocean Generation exists to collaborate with people on the front lines of climate change – specifically SDG 14 – to develop solutions, deliver skills, resources, and assets to their problem space.
It was a tough journey for her starting Ocean Gen, mainly because she had zero experience. She had an idea during an internship and began the journey with a song while at university. There was never a one fixed goal for Ocean Gen. Over the past two years, it has been a constant journey adapting to situations and opportunities that arose. The idea she had at the beginning for Ocean Gen is nowhere near what it is today.
Starting a non-profit is like starting a business, you have all the admin, policies, protocols, accountability to donors, you are always accountable to donors as they are donating the money and have certain expectations. The whole admin and legal side were incredibly challenging to cope with at first. Luckily now she has found people at the top of their game to assist with these tasks.
The power of Ocean Gen lies in the power of collaboration, with many voices, actions, and projects. The challenges our oceans and planet face are truly horrifying and unfortunately challenges most likely are only going to get worse, and they don’t know what lies ahead.
With that in mind, Ocean Gen is willing to adapt and prevent climate injustices across many communities. There is not one size fits all approach to climate change, and so as an organization, they will adjust based on circumstance to ensure young people in the face of climate issues have the best opportunities whether that be through education programs or tech solutions.
It has been a crazy couple of years that have led to so many incredible experiences from partnering with the UN, speaking at lots of events, traveling, sharing knowledge, building a reliable team and meeting incredible, inspiring change-makers across lots of different fields on the journey.
Their primary donor and relationship are with United Nations Office of Projects and Services (UNOPS), and so they have an agreement with them to deliver hackathons and education programs in Antigua and Barbuda, Kenya and the Pacific. When they work in other countries, the first instinct is to find reliable local partners and people to help them execute the programs. Post hackathons they always try and find partners for teams to support their ideas with seed funding.
As a non-profit you are not sustainable because you do not have a reoccurring revenue, so you are constantly looking at building your network for support, partners, endorsements, etc.
While most of their time is dedicated to on the ground, Ocean Generation has a strong media presence across various social channels. With an audience of close to 20K highly engaged followers, Ocean Generation time is also dedicated to creating and curating content for our online community as we believe this provides an excellent alternative education platform.
The core of Ocean Gen has always been how can they do things differently. Many of them are not even necessarily aware of the severity of climate change, so how could they engage these people? (if you have an idea on how to engage more people, comment below) They have since experimented through mobile gaming, live events, socials and now most excitingly through partner support able to start on the ground projects creating solutions for communities.
Specifically, at the moment, they're focusing on
Providing skills and capacity building, especially with young people, through training and workshops.
Supporting technology and innovation through events like Hackathons, design sprints, and global challenges. They provide small seed funding and match partners where they can.
Using the power of storytelling to share these ideas and experiences from these communities to engage the world’s young people. The young people they work with face climate injustice on multiple levels.
Geographically they live on the front lines of climate change; generationally they will inherit a planet more unstable than any previous age. At Ocean Generation, they focus on developing their capacity and skills so they can confront the injustices they face head-on.
They do this through, for example, developing a ‘Green Tech and Innovation Certificate,’ to provide cutting edge tech education combined with fostering a spirit of innovation to enable them to imagine solutions to secure their futures.
They also try to amplify the stories these young people tell them, and share them with young people globally in the spirit of fostering global collaboration and dialogue.
They are currently expanding their programs from small islands in the Caribbean region, into Kenya and Fiji.
There are lots of stories through our various programs over the past two years, and impacting peoples lives in the face of climate change is our drive.
Most recently a young girl that participated in their coding workshops and later on at the hackathon. She was SO shy when they first met that she said I don’t feel like I belonged anywhere, by the end of the program through encouragement from the mentors and coaching from educators she ended up being part of the winning team for that hackathon event. The growth in confidence just through one Ocean Generation opportunity she was able to believe in herself which was incredible to see.
They hosted a hackathon for disaster relief in Antigua and Barbuda. It was after Hurricane Irma had destroyed 95% of Barbuda. The island was left entirely uninhabitable and desolate, but she had the opportunity to speak with survivors of the disaster – stories were horrifying from babies washing away, to try to swim in flooding and gathered praying that the roofs weren’t going to blow off.
Knowing that the technologies developed at our Ocean Gen Antigua hack will either help better prepare or deal with disaster aftermath more efficiently if it happens again is essential.
One of our very first programs was helping a fishing village in a remote coastal town in Haiti called Anse du Clerc; they worked with fishers to help keep their fish fresher for longer with solar powered freezers. Due to over-fishing and climate change, their catches are no longer as fruitful as a decade ago, and the community is in disarray. By prolonging catches to sell at market improves the economic growth of the entire village giving younger generations better chances of going to school, especially the girls.
Ocean Gen always finds that by focusing on one of the sustainable development goals like oceans and climate they indirectly impact so many other aspects of peoples lives.
Daisy's Legacy
She's only 24, and she doesn't think it's possible for her to know what her legacy will be just yet, she still has so much to do, experience, realize. But what she does know is that something in her legacy will include helping people, and leaving the planet in a better state for future generations.
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