Melati Wijsen is a young Indonesian/Dutch full time changemaker.
At 12 years old, she founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags in 2013 with her younger sister Isabel, then 10, and has been leading the movement driven by youth since. After 6 long years on the frontline, the official ban on plastic bags, straws and Styrofoam has been enforced by the Balinese government (June 23, 2019). This is thanks to the thousands of supporters and loyal, determined partners on the island. Bali is the first Indonesian province to make the ban on plastic bags happen!
Melati & Isabel Wijsen: What if children could change the world. The Plastic Revolution.
Melati graduated from Green School Bali in 2018, one year early and has been a full-time change-maker ever since.
Melati Wijsen also founded the people’s movement One Island One Voice in 2015 where over 500+ Bali based businesses come together to say NO to single use plastics. In 2017 Mountain Mamas was established, a social enterprise empowering women in the mountains of Bali: every woman gets paid per bag that she produces and 50% of the proceeds of the sales go back to the community for education, waste management and health insurance, the other 50% help fund BBPB.
Melati Wijsen has spoken on world stages such as TED, the EU parliament in Brussels and the UN in NYC. She has also been selected as FORBES top ten most inspiring women in the country in 2017 and recently co-chaired at the World Economic Forum WEF in Davos.
The team has been doing education work on the waste problem in Bali over the past years: with talks and workshops in schools, with beach cleanups, with the provision of over 16,000 alternative bags, with work on a pilot project for a plastic-free village, with lobbying the local and national government, with speeches at various local and global events.
In 2019 Melati Wijsen completed the filming of her first feature film length documentary, Bigger Than Us, traveling the world to visit young changemakers.
Her most recent project YOUTHTOPIA is focused on empowering more young people to accelerate change by providing them with relevant skills and tools to create impact through peer-to-peer programs.
Melati Wijsen recent talks
World Economic Forum, Davos 2020
Swiss Economic Forum Interlaken 2022
Paris Peace Forum 2019
Deutsche Bank Global Wealth Management Forum 2019
World Economic Forum Climate Summit, NYC (co-host) 2019
National Geographic Explorers Festival, Washington, DC 2019