9 year old Lucie Parsons, a member of Young NCB, stunned academics with her keynote speech on the dangers of plastic at the European Union of Aquarium Curators Conference at The Deep in Hull.
When I watched Blue Planet 2 I became really upset at what I saw the plastic pollution doing. So that night I did a poster on plastics in our oceans and the danger it was doing to the animals. I then asked my family if we could do a beach clean and within an hour we had got 12 bin bags full of plastic waste. A few days later we also walked around our village and collected rubbish, most of the rubbish we collected was plastic waste again.
Katy Duke, the manager of The Deep, had heard about the stuff I had been doing and asked me to do a speech for the European Union of Aquarium Curators conference. Katy wanted me to open the conference with a keynote speech. It was attended by over 150 people from all over the world and none of them knew it was going to be a child speaking.
I felt ok before the event and was excited. I had done some research at my school on what other children felt about plastic pollution so I had lots of stuff to say. I put the information into a speech and a Powerpoint with the help of my mummy and daddy. On the day I was excited but when I went into the big room with all the people there, it was so nerve wracking that I started to shake. I had a little cry with my mummy but she told me it would be ok and that everyone would want to hear what I had to say. I was then ok and did my speech. Everyone was very kind and said they enjoyed my speech a lot and that I was very brave.
I think it is really important for children to have an opinion because the decisions that the adults are making will affect children the most. We are the future of this planet. Plus children also have good ideas and one of them could save this planet.