Welcome to Forbes! With your consent, we use cookies and other similar technologies to better understand your actions and interests, enhance functionality, customize your experiences, and to provide content and advertising that is more relevant to you. We also use them to help ensure the secure use and navigation of the site. For further details on our use of cookies and your personal data, please see our Privacy Statement.
A
fter a flood devastated her hometown of San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, in 2015, Xiye Bastida dedicated her life to fighting climate change. In 2020, the now 23-year-old co-founded the Re-Earth Initiative, a youth-led climate advocacy organization aimed at addressing environmental threats.
“That changed me because it showed me that the climate crisis was here, that it was affecting our communities, my people,” Bastida told Forbes.
Since launching her non-profit, Bastida says the organization has raised more than $3.4 million from big climate players like 776 Foundation, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, and Diane Von Fursterberg. That money has gone toward supporting climate initiatives around the world—like Shamba Box, which helps farmers in Tanzania learn regenerative farming techniques; and La Labs, a group of students in Ottawa, Canada working to increase the city’s use of Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology. $1 million in grants has been dolled out so far.
