Hello, my name is Sullivan Kemper, and I am the youth founder of Indy Pacifica. My connection with the Pacific Islands dates back to my discovery of a passion for world geography in Middle School. Teaching myself world geography provided me with a deeper understanding of the world around me and enabled me to examine the ongoing issues many communities face today.

The Pacific Islands quickly became a region of the world that deeply fascinated me. Growing up in the United States, I realized you aren’t often taught about the Pacific Islands, and I wanted to find out why. Through researching the Pacific Islands, I started understanding more about the Pacific’s geography, cultural traditions, way of life, and I also learned about the effects rising sea levels are having on the region and how much of an impact they have already had.

This struck me because the Pacific is positioned as an early warning sign for the rest of the world, and shows how real and how urgent climate change truly is. The thing is, if I hadn’t done my own research, I would have never found out about this crisis, as these Pacific communities are often overshadowed on the global stage.

This realization opened my eyes and inspired me to take action because if we don’t take action now, we are risking an entire region filled with deep-rooted history, culture, languages, and entire communities to displacement. I founded Indy Pacifica to not only open the world's eyes to an ongoing overlooked crisis, but also to get directly involved in fighting the issue and to make people realize that if we don’t do anything now, there might not be a later.