MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend: Felicity from EcoSteward

We’ve been so lucky this year to meet Felicity, a dynamic and caring social and human rights consultant, writer and eco-mum.  Much of her 9-year old son’s bedtime reading consists of how children in Africa lack water, how children in the Arctic are impacted by loss of ice, how animals are becoming endangered around the world and how he can make a difference by switching off those lights.  A parent after our own hearts!

We first met Felicity through Twitter, as EcoSteward, which she set up to reflect her care and love for the environment.  Her profile features photos she took of this year’s Wellington 350.org event, which she attended with her son and posted as her tribute to the day and "New Zealanders' active and genuine engagement with climate change".

Felicity is a key contributor and administrator on wikiHow, which is aiming to be the world's greatest free how-to site ever. Here, she has been responsible for editing, writing, and collating 500 articles which were donated to One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and in September this year wrote enough articles as part of a special project to have over 400 books donated to children in Africa. She also helped start a UNICEF project with this site and her articles have been read by over 15 million people!

Another organisation Felicity is involved with is the Gender International Law Justice project which is seeking to find out how women make the best use of international law in a local context. For the past four years she and the team have been researching in Kenya, Argentina, Iran, and Pakistan to gain information which will be published by Cambridge University Press next year.

Felicity also blogs for Breast Cancer Action Montreal (BCAM) about "Conscious Cosmetics" and disseminates information about what she says are “the problems of the current overwhelming focus on post-breast cancer rather than tackling the environmental/medical contaminants that bring about breast cancer in the first place”.

In addition to these amazing roles, Felicity is a volunteer for Wellington Zoo where she helps members of the public learn more about the animals and the zoo's conservation messages. And apart from that -- she does a lot of chalk drawings of animals!

At MiniMonos we completely agree when Felicity says: “I'd simply hope that we all continue to focus on caring about our environment and animals in practical, engaged ways that help to ensure our kids have a healthy world to live in”. 

You can contact Felicity through Twitter here.

Comments

[JackHerrick]

I've had the pleasure of working with Felicity on wikiHow for several years. And I can attest that she is absolutely amazing. She has done so much for the wiki and not just in the way of writing, editing, and curating content. While she is wikiHow's most prolific writer, she also found time to to spearhead wikiHow's OLPC, UNICEF projects. As a project leader, she uses her warmth, empathy and keen judgement to earn the respect and admiration of many. She sets a tone of compassion that make wikiHow a pleasant place to be online. Any one of these accomplishments would be amazing, but Felicity manages to do them all. She is a true gem.

Thanks for featuring her.

[Andrea Deely]

Thanks so much for your comments Jack!

From being our online friend, we had the privilege of meeting Felicity face-to-face for coffee today (well, actually, tea and strawberries). Not only was I amazed at the sheer volume of what Felicity gets done to make a difference in the world (as well as bringing up a child!) but as you described perfectly, her warmth and empathy were a delight to be in the presence of.

Thanks for taking the time to have morning tea with us, Felicity :-)

[Elizabeth Rangel]

Felicity sounds like such an amazing person I would like to meet someday. Thanks for the article.

[Felicity]

Thanks Elizabeth - I hope to meet you too! :)