Solidarity With Shamim

Aim

Climate justice champion - Shamim - faces dangerous threat of homelessness - can the climate movement of the Global North support her?

Shamim is a 24 year old climate campaigner based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. As is all too often the case in this line of 'work' - our time and value are rarely paid (in money). Our work is love in action. However we live in a society where love, kindness, care, skill exchanges etc. do not pay the bills. The consequence of this is that Shamim is at immediate risk of being evicted and made homeless. And life on the streets in Tanzania is potentially life-threatening.
Shamim doesn't have a family support network, nor is there social security in Tanzania. It is a genuinely dangerous position Shamim faces if we - her privileged comrades of the Global North - cannot come together and support her. Not to mention the fact that without safety and security Shamim cannot continue her incredible work empowering local communities to take climate action.

Rent arrears and a demand for 6 months rent up front (to stay in her rented accom. beyond April) mean we need to raise £2250 ($2600) by 24th April to ensure Shamim has some safety and security to stay in her accommodation. Moving is sadly not an option, since Shamim is already in some of the cheapest accommodation available to her, moving would only mean increased rent and a worsening of this already difficult situation. Please help support Shamim and keep her safe. She has given so much to society and mother nature, now it is our turn to give back to Shamim.

As a thank you to anyone who can donate to keep Shamim safe, we would like to invite you to a zoom meeting on Sunday 30th April at (1pm EAT, 11am UK). This will be an opportunity for you to meet Shamim, for Shamim to thank you and lay out her commitment and strategy to ensure a secure financial position by end of Sept when next rent payment will be due, and to answer any questions you might have. We would also like to use this space to share ideas and build strong working relationships across our communities - perhaps becoming the start of a regular (monthly) sacred meeting space to keep our communities connected in our important climate and social justice work.

If that wasn't enough to stand in solidarity with Shamim, check out just a snippet of her amazing work to date, and what she has planned this year...

Highlights of Shamim's achievements and incredible work to date:

Check out Shamim's Ted Talk

Shamim founded the Doors of Hope foundation in 2016. Doors of Hope works with women and the youth across Tanzania with a focus on WASH (water, sanitation and hygene) initiatives. A beautiful example of her work within this space was leading a campaign to teach young girls how to make reusable sanitary pads.

In 2018 Shamim established XR Tanzania which is still going strong.

Selected as Tanzania's female youth delegate at COP27.

On the 2023 Board of Youth  for the Resilience project.

Co-Founder of Trees For Birthdays - Following a very successful twinned birthday tree planting party for her friend, soul-sister, and TfB co-founder Jen (based in Scotland) in April 2022 the two young climate campaigners established Trees For Birthdays which has already received a parliamentary motion at Holyrood (Scottish Government). Shamim and Jen have worked very closely ever since and are leading by example to break down barriers and demonstrate 'glocal' collaboration between the Global South and Global North. 

Debt for Climate campaigner - supporting this successful movement at local and global level including being 'postergirl' and spokesperson for some of their global campaigns in 2022 and 2023.

A taste of what is to come in the immediate and near future if we can stand in solidarity and support Shamim (the work she has planned that simply won't be possible without your support):

Trees for Birthdays - whose focus this year is community empowerment for climate action.

The Climate Change Education Caravan and twinned communities for climate action.

An Apology to Nature.

Asked by the Global Youth Leadership Centre to coordinate their Global Youth Summit to be held in Tanzania later this year or early 2024.

More #TruthfulTuesday conversations and possibly even a podcast...

Will you stand in solidarity with Shamim?
We appreciate it is a difficult time for all right now, and we would like to stress that Shamim has been looking for paid work but the job market in Dar Es Salaam is tough. She has also applied for remote job-share roles with her UK-based Trees For Birthday co-founder with no luck. She has faced racism and discrimination from reputable global activist groups who seemingly cannot pay VLE's (volunteer living expenses) to their global south counterparts. She has been promised paid work from various organisations only to be let down.

We, her friends and comrades in climate justice, are her last resort. Hopefully we can come together and show Solidarity with Shamim, support her at this time of need in the same way we would hope to be supported in a similar position.

Shamim has so much more to give the climate justice movement locally and globally. It would be a heartbreaking missed opportunity if we cannot support her at this critical time.  Please, if you can, give as much as you are able to help her through this situation - we can assure you the long term benefit will be well worth it. :)

All our love, and thank you for reading this far.
Shamim and Jen
(Jen has set up this crowdfunder to support Shamim because there are no crowdfunding platforms that allow you to pay directly to a Tanzanian bank account!)

Please Note - this crowdfunder is currently set to end on 01/05/2023 as this was the default. We are currently working with Crowdfunder to bring this forward as Shamim's landlady has set a hard deadline of Monday 10th April to provide the arrears and 6 months up-front rent.

This project successfully funded on 1st May 2023