ACS Video Submitted to International Competitions: Solomon Islands at the Frontline of Climate Change

Ani Apresyan, former ACS intern and BLAST competition participant

Hello! I’m Ani Apresyan, a rising junior majoring in Economics and Political Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I started working with Accelerate in 2023, participated in the first BLAST competition, and have stuck around in various capacities ever since! Last summer, a team of wonderful students at ACS engaged in an entire summer’s worth of dialogue and WhatsApp conversations, wherein local teens and Solomon Islander students forged genuine relationships with one another, sending photos of their landscapes back and forth and talking about everything from what their favorite subject is at school to how vastly the nature surrounding them has changed in the past decade. I created a short video based on these interactions to highlight what we learned from the students over the course of the summer. This video aims to reveal the power of communication and the importance of understanding through highlighting the stories of students in the Solomon Islands whose perspectives are so often overlooked.

In discussions about climate action, we often focus on what is happening domestically which, while incredibly important, does not capture the full extent of the global nature of the imminent threat of climate change. Low-lying states in the Pacific, for example, suffer greatly from the environmentally destructive actions taken by countries in the West. Nonprofits like Accelerate emphasize forming connections to such communities, such as students in the Solomon Islands, in order to gain perspective on the global impact of climate change and better understand what we can do to approach this issue effectively. 

Screenshot from Solomon Islands at the Frontline of Climate Change video.

The video I created was initially shown at ACS’s The World We Inherit climate gallery in August 2025. Since then, I have entered it into the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest, which offers youth aged 8 to 25 an opportunity to cover a topic within the realm of sustainability and climate action through the visual medium of film. The video has also been entered into the United Nations Youth Climate Report, which utilizes environmentally-focused videos from around the world to create an interactive database consisting of documentaries spanning the globe. This database is eventually used as a reference for delegates who attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s COP conference as a resource while they evaluate prospective policies. 

These opportunities are everywhere, and all it takes in today’s digital age is an iPhone camera and some sort of editing software to bring essential stories to life on screen! Art is one of the most impactful ways that we can reach others, inciting emotions and inspiring action. Whether you would like to write articles, fiction stories, create documentary videos, or animate a short film about the environment, you are sure to find an opportunity to make your voice heard. If you have any questions as you traverse this exciting terrain, please reach out to me at ani.apresyan@icloud.com! I look forward to seeing the work that you do and the change that you create.