Jonie
NISHIMURA

Japan

Jonie Nishimura is a 17 years old student residing in Tokyo, Japan. She grew up in a family where her father’s side of the family is Japanese American. Her grandmother, who spent the early years of her childhood in the internment camps embraced the Japanese idea of “mottainai,” which relates to conservation. She also adopted this idea and wish to spread this to youth around the world. Since she was young, she enjoyed playing volleyball, playing video games, and listening to music. In addition, she enjoys swimming, biking, and spending time doing other active/outdoor activities

The main global problems she wants to address are environmental problems such as climate change and conservation. She has taken classes at school to educate herself on the issue, and was part of a club called global issues network for all of middle school. Although she mainly focus on making an impact outside of school as her school is already quite aware on the issue, she continued to make impact at a student club which advocates for a greener future. Meanwhile, outside of school, for all four years of high school she has participated in TEDxYouth@Tokyo, where events are organized based on different global issues. The team invited speakers and hosted workshops run by organizations such as Friday for Future. She also organized an event at a local library where two of my friends and she prepared a crafts activity and taught children about climate change in both English and Japanese.

To create a platform for sustainable change, she founded Connected Youth for Climate Conservation (CYCC), an initiative acting to promote education and awareness in environmental conservation as a pathway to collaborate on climate change towards a sustainable world. She presented CYCC at a community event of Social Enterprise World Forum 2022. 

In the future, at university, she wishes to study environmental science. This relates to her world problem since conservation and climate change are both environmental issues that are often focused on in environmental science.