Connecting Blue Souls: The Role of Justice in Accessible Ocean Literacy by Dana Ahmed

By: Dana Ahmed, Law and Politics Student at the University of Glasgow, Founder of EcoSpectrum and the Asfour Initiative, OIN Team Member

In the midst of a world that is overtaken by the imposturous power of drafting some words on a paper that preach justice, you begin to question, how can one escape false representation without risking the possibility of endangering the growing momentum of people who are only just beginning to speak about the niches of the faults in the system. How do you not push people away into climate doomism by telling them the mere truth about their misconducts and the result of their inaction. And if within telling people about the injustices of a system that you love and care about so deeply, would that potentially risk justice and love becoming a chore, and thus ingenuine?

Growing up on the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, a country hosting the second highest rate of autism in the world, it never occurred to me that such a blatant inaccessibility of resources, opportunities, acceptance, and inclusion faced by an entire community can be so severely forgotten, nationally and globally. The reality revealed to me at a much later stage in my life exposed that even if people were aware of the intrinsic issues in accessibility, even if education did it justice, it won’t magically change people’s behaviors, simply because there is no how-to list. And, in order to create a how-to list, you must tackle the issue at its root, which is simply to question, why is it that we segregate such deep inherent issues in society to ourselves simply because it does not apply to us in a more barefaced way? More importantly, how do you teach love?

 This questioned triggered my conscience, urging me to acknowledge my privilege and find my purpose, uncovering what exactly I can do to avoid being futile to causes that matter. My power was always in the ocean, it is the sole host of my love for the planet, I just did not know it yet. After the passing of my grandad, Asfour, I returned to the nooks of Egypt where I shared my most profound memories with him, scattered across the coasts of the Nile and the Red Sea. In returning to these places, reviving my almost forgotten glimpses of him in fish and flowers he admired, the Tilapia and Lavender, for the first time, I saw the beauty in nature without being overtaken by the anger in its politics. For once, I slowed down. I connected, deeply. I discovered how we all are created for nature, before discovering its anthropological benefits to humankind, how the grace of nature exists in superiority over ideologies and human constructs, and that it will always win as we are part of its ecosystem and circle of life, and not the other way around, regardless of how much we try and escape this reality. I found blue love to be completely intrinsic, existent in everyone, and it’s the lack of access to information of how one can relate, and thus connect, to their nature, that births neglect.

In slowing down, I returned to a childhood hobby of mine that was taught to me by my aunt, crocheting, and began making, what I call, marine dolls, dolls in the shape of marine species that are stuffed with plastic collected from the coasts of where my blue soul comes to life, the Nile and the Red Sea in Egypt. I connected with local Bedouin women across these coasts, who were able to reimagine a world with me where literacy, art, law, and representation were connected to the ocean. We all shared how the ocean is a haven that we all, along with the late Asfour, spoke to and know that it listens. Together, we created The Asfour Initiative, a transformative project dedicated to amplifying the voices of coastal communities in Egypt and advancing ocean literacy for illiterate children and youth on coasts. We managed to produce over 40 dolls in the span of 3 months which were sold in the UAE, US, UK, and Portugal. Most importantly, we created a way of advancing ocean literacy and making it accessible while representing people and their ocean-based stories via something as simple and silly as conducting puppet shows using a few crocheted sea turtles, whales, and parrot fish.

Through these puppet shows, we not only taught ocean literacy, we echoed to the world that the ocean is a haven for all of us, regardless of where we are from, what we do, and who we are. Local Bedouin kids who are only 6 and 7 years of age, living in a faraway city on the South of Sinai, a beautiful coast that is almost forgotten in its broken reefs and plastic infused beaches, were made to righteously believe that they are the saviors of our ocean and seas, and were given the chance to be the teachers, and not the mere listeners. They were entrusted with the science and knowledge of their homes, because it was always equally theirs to claim. They were given the responsibility to teach love, and so they must have always had it, right? The ocean was accessible and a refuge of connection to the world, why did it take us so long to see that?

Figure 1. Children involved in the Ocean Literacy Activity

In returning to the community who is the reason I spearheaded into accessibility as a concept, I revived what I started then, EcoSpectrum, an organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of autistic youth via creating ocean literacy content that is accessible and curated for the community. Alongside stereotypes that make the autistic community have an 80% of an unemployment rate, and thus forgotten in the transition to a climate resilient and blue world, EcoSpectrum was made to collaborate with different sectors, people, stakeholders, and organizations, to create the first fully accessible ocean literacy curriculum for autistic and neurodivergent youth that forces connecting with blue souls and the ocean. Neurodivergent and autistic youth led these connections and work, resulting in us hosting the first fully autistic delegation at COP28 in Dubai, and leading an official UNFCCC side event titled “Revolutionsing Ocean Education; Initiating Ocean Literacy for Autistic Youth”. Ocean art and blue breaths is a dedicated segment of our ocean curriculum, making up the entirety EcoSpectrum, an endeavor which I believe truly encompasses what it means to leave no one behind in the face of nature, and giving unrepresented leaders the power to finally lead.

Figure 2. The children happy with their own created project

The ocean was never and will never be a chore if we create a world where accessibility is a force of nature, not an anthropological choice. If we truly acknowledge that blue love is to be discovered not created, and that our collective responsibility in our privilege of shaping and educating our corners of the world to fill global gaps of misrepresentation and underrepsentation in the name of justice, what would our planet look like? We would all be connected in the name of love and responsibility, so just imagine where we would be instead?

Figure 3. The Puppet Show

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This post can be cited as: Dana Ahmed, Connecting Blue Souls: The Role of Justice in Accessible Ocean Literacy, June 12, 2024.