Varnessa Kayen Varlyngton

Varnessa Kayen Varlyngton was thirteen when she noticed that climate action had quietly pushed children like her to the sidelines — treated as vulnerable rather than capable. Her answer was Egalitarianism For Earth, a youth-led civic-tech and environmental-education organization that has since directly empowered more than 1,000 students and reached over 34,000 people through animated content, cleanups, makerspaces, green roundtables and the Children4Climate initiative. Her résumé of firsts is staggering for any age: TEDx Countdown speaker, Ashoka Young Changemaker, and the youngest-ever (and first Nigerian) UN Climate Change LEARN Champion, with a children's book, AMAMA, published when she was just ten. Mentored through the Ban Ki-moon Centre and partnered with Ashoka Africa, Varnessa frames her work not as charity but as a challenge to who gets to lead — living proof, she insists, that young people are present leaders already shaping environmental justice.