Kehkashan Basu
Pronouns: She/Her
Organisation: Green Hope Foundation
Country of origin: Dubai
Profile
Kehkashan Basu is a Canadian and Dubai-born peacebuilder who currently resides in Ithaca, New York as she completes her Master’s in Business Administration at Cornell University. She founded the Green Hope Foundation at the age of 12, after noticing a lack of inclusivity of children, women, and marginalised groups in international bodies such as the UN. She said she believes that this lack of inclusivity exacerbates further inequalities and prevents the growth of peace within societies. Working with over 2,000 people across 25 countries, Green Hope aims to educate individuals and communities about sustainable development,encouraging the creation of more peaceful and equitable societies. In addition to being the founder and president of Green Hope, Kehkashan has been presented with the titles of United Nations Human Rights Champion and National Geographic Young Explorer, and was featured in Forbes 30 under 30.
Story
When Kehkashan Basu was seven years old, a picture of a dead bird with a stomach full of plastic turned her world upside down. She made up her mind to become an eco-warrior and planted her first tree on World Environment Day that year. Soon afterward she began to take individual action across all aspects of sustainability. After attending the Rio+20 Earth Summit and observing the event’s lack of inclusivity of youth and marginalised groups, 12-year-old Kehkashan was inspired to found Green Hope Foundation.
Kehkashan describes Green Hope Foundation as her ‘greatest success and the thing I’m most proud about.’ She said that the foundation inspires non-tokenistic and sustainable living in its aim to ‘show empathy, through all their actions towards people and the planet, to create more peaceful societies.’ Green Hope Foundation’s work is broad and covers all the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by focusing on educating individuals and communities about sustainable development, climate resilience, disarmament, empathy and equality.
Kehkashan grew up in an inclusive community, which showed her that peace and harmony were within reach. She said she believes this experience influences how she runs Green Hope Foundation. Kehkashan sees herself as fortunate to live in a society where everyone is accepted for who they are and able to live a life of dignity. She seeks to spread this globally with a decentralised approach. ‘Our work is extremely diverse, [so] we need to understand the local challenges and therefore implement localised solutions’, she said.
However, Kehkashan’s path to establishing and building up Green Hope Foundation was not without its difficulties. She faced many challenges as a young woman, particularly in the forms of harassment and criticism from older youth. Kehkashan said there are difficulties that youth-led organisations face in receiving funding. When asked how the foundation can combat this issue, she said, ‘Our work speaks for itself. So we’re just continuing the work [and] making sure we practise what we preach.’
Kehkashan that every day she learns more through her work – something she believes prevents her from taking aspects of her own life for granted. The organisation also helped her realise the importance of giving back with every single one of her actions to people on the planet. Kehkashan said this is essential not only for growing as a human being herself, but for building peace within society. She said, ‘Peace is interconnected with all of our world’s challenges. If we are able to create an equitable society, a society that takes care of the planet, and the economy, society and environment growing together in harmony, that is going to create peace.’
