Every year on 12 August, the world marks International Youth Day. No matter their culture, religion, background, or language, young people everywhere share many of the same hopes: dignity, opportunity, real participation, quality education, decent work, and a sustainable future. Today, we’re highlighting three Roots & Shoots youth projects that turn those hopes into practice.
Students living beside Gishwati–Mukura National Park went from harming wildlife to protecting it. Like many communities bordering protected areas, some of these young people had once been part of activities that harmed the wildlife around them — whether through habitat pressure, snaring, or simply not understanding the stakes of what was disappearing on their doorstep.
Through Roots & Shoots, these same students have become conservation ambassadors for Eastern chimpanzees and golden monkeys. Rather than staying as passive learners, the students turned outward: educating their peers and neighbours, monitoring the park’s edges, and becoming a visible link between the community and the conservation effort next door.
That work has since grown beyond chimpanzees and golden monkeys. In partnership with Roots & Shoots Tanzania, the Rwandan group has expanded into broader animal welfare work.
In France, a group of young Roots & Shoots members noticed something many people only think about once it happens to them: veterinary care is expensive, and for families already stretched thin, a sick or injured pet can quickly become a crisis. Rather than looking away, these young people decided to act. Their response, “Véto pour tous” (“Vet for All”), brings veterinary students together for solidarity afternoons, offering reduced-cost or free consultations to pet owners in precarious situations, including people experiencing homelessness.
The consultations cover a wide range of services, from vaccinations and sterilisations to paediatric and geriatric check-ups, as well as surgeries and hospitalisations when needed. Even the funding reflects that same spirit: costs are split three ways, one third covered by the young volunteers themselves, one third by the pet owner, and the final third donated by the vet. No one carries the weight alone, and no one is left without care.
For these young people, hope isn’t something to wait for. It’s something they choose to practise, one appointment, one animal, one family at a time.
Students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn led their “Palm-to-Palm” initiative, making their campus the first to be certified for tackling unsustainable palm oil in college dining. Through “Palm-to-Palm”, students pushed their own campus to do better, working with dining services to source palm oil responsibly.
The group marked the milestone with an award ceremony and keynote talks that drew a direct line between something as ordinary as a dining hall menu and something as consequential as primate conservation half a world away.
A national park in Rwanda. A veterinary care initiative in France. A university dining hall in the USA. Different corners of the world, different causes, the same throughline: young people putting hope into action.
What ties these three stories together isn’t the cause itself. It’s the willingness to look at a problem close to home, however local or however global its roots, and decide to do something about it. That’s the spirit Roots & Shoots was built on, and it’s exactly what International Youth Day is meant to celebrate.
Every story here started with someone deciding to get involved in this global movement. You can do the same.
Find your local Roots & Shoots office and take action today—by joining a group or starting your own. Together, we can build a more compassionate and sustainable world.
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