2023 Shackleton Lecture by Ms Songqiao Yao
The Shackleton Lectures, one of the most notable Worldwise events held each year, honour the pioneering spirit of Dulwich College Alumnus Sir Ernest Shackleton, a world-renowned Antarctic explorer whose name has become synonymous with courage, bravery, and, most importantly, leadership. The Shackleton Lectures, as part of the Worldwise Events Programme, bring the most fascinating people, such as explorers, adventurers, and educators, to share their stories with students, teachers, and the wider community across the whole network. The lectures reinforce the values of leadership, determination, and courage and put a great emphasis on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Global Citizenship.
On 16th March, we were honoured to have Ms Yao Songqiao as our Shackleton Lecture guest to share her story with us.
An graduate of Mount Holyoak College, the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, Songqiao Yao is an explorer and educator committed to solving our ecological challenges through reconnecting youth to nature and inspiring them to take actions, in China and globally. She can be found leading expeditions to the Antarctica, telling stories over a campfire, or playing with kids in nature.
Before setting up Wildbound, Songqiao Yao was trained in critical social theory, geography and management, she helped build two healthy food brands, was a Chinese youth delegate to UN Climate summit, wrote reports that affected water policy in China, facilitated policy dialogues and philanthropic partnerships between China and US, China and EU. She is also working on a book inspired by her different environmentalist experiences.
The day was divided into a workshop and a lecture, in which Ms Songqiao shared with the students present about the connection between nature and human beings, and how to have dreams and explore in a time full of unknowns.
2023 Shackleton Lecture
The workshop included an interesting 'time-traveling dialogue' session that impressed the Year 12 student Felix T, “All of us were paired up and imagined one of us was our descendent 7 generations away, and we had a conversation about the “great turning” of all the great movements and changes happening right now in our world—this activity, as Ms. Songqiao explained, was a method of the indigenous people of North America used to do when they made important decisions, this is truly inspiring for us to consider a long-term impact when we are making our choices and decisions, where we shouldn’t be only focusing on the issues and impacts short-termly.”
About 'Take action'
At the lecture, Ms Songqiao shared her "legendary" experience: in Germany, she interned at a few organisations that worked on the climate change negotiation process which made her decide going to work on protecting nature and work on the topic of the environment for her career; she worked along all these big major rivers in Asia traveling from the headwater to the delta, not only look at fisheries and freshwater ecosystem and the rivers but also work with the community by the river., where she learned a lot from about relationship with nature and how to actually help strengthen these communities; she've been to sub saharan africa and quite a lot of different places in Africa, and working with the local people on the land and learning from these women about their agricultural practice and trying to come up with ways to reduce food waste from the farm; In Deben, in eastern South Africa, as a young Chinese delegate to the UN Climate Conference, seeing a young woman fearlessly speaking out for young people and for the long-term development of humanity which touched her, “Young people have to take action, we need to create the future we want, because no one else is going to create that future for us. We've been waiting, but we actually need to be active in creating a future that we will feel safe and we will feel happy to be in.”
Afterwards, her many expeditions to Antarctica, Greenland and the Himalayas made her realise that nature is so closely linked to human culture, and that sustainable development requires the efforts of all. She said, “I hope you think about what some of the change-making initiatives. What is one action you can take for nature? And what can you do for our planets? Because we cannot wait for anyone else. We are the ones that we have been waiting for.
About 'Dream'
Ms Songqiao’s 16 explorations of Antarctica are amazing. She said that when she was just 9 years old, she received a set of photographs as gifts from her uncle, which is a set of six photos of Antarctica. “In the 90s, when I was a kid, there were no BBC documentaries like Frozen Planet. We had no Netflix or any of these other things where you can watch documentaries. So these photos were my only window to Antarctica, which is a completely different world from the city I was living in. It was at that time that I had a dream about going to Antarctica.” However, it was not a story like ‘I had a dream, and I worked very hard every day, and I wanted to go to Antarctica, and then I achieved it’, The true story is when she was in high school she completely forgot. But fortunately, as she grew up she came back to this track leading to her dream and kept bringing herself step by step closer to its eventual realisation. “So no matter how much homework you have, please dream, please think about places you want to go and have that desire, you might achieve it earlier than you expect. And please don't let the exams and all of those pressure make you forget.”
The young people in the audience were also touched by Song Qiao's soft-spoken but "heartfelt" words, her fascinating experiences and her earnest appeal to the environment. “If the history of the Earth is represented in one day, everything we humans created all happened in a single breath; breathing certainly is wonderful, but don’t forget, it is nature that allows us to breath.” This was the quote shared by Ms. Songqiao which touched Felix deeply, he said that “What I took away from this significant experience the most, is that Ms. Songqiao truly reinforce the idea of respect and gratitude towards nature and everything we have, made us question, and reflect on all the decisions we are making, harming mother nature, where we endlessly exploit and never showed any gratitude. Yet at the same time, where Ms. Songqiao inspired me the most, is that with awareness and passion in mind, all decisions made should be based on the people as well, as a key factor for successful leadership.”
