Alex Rendell’s Mission to Ensure Thailand’s Future Leaders Care About the Environment

Eager to join the Thai environmental movement, and certain that the privileges of celebrity could be pressed into the service of a greater cause, Rendell invited Kru Kot and actress Jarinporn “Toey” Joonkiat, to found the EEC in 2015. Thailand’s youth are the locus of the EEC’s efforts to foster greater public awareness of the environmental crisis. Through immersive hands-on learning in “nature’s classroom”, Rendell’s city-bred students witness, firsthand, the degradation of natural habitats, threatened wildlife and, equally importantly, ways of rehabilitating and protecting the environment– issues that may seem to unfold on the periphery of their daily lives. The ECC’s education programs take students throughout the country– learning elephant conservation in Khao Yai, visiting museums in Bang Kacha, diving in Koh Lanta and learning to care for animals in an introductory veterinary course– and have become so popular that they all have long waiting lists. In an interview with CNN on the internet celebrity of Marium, a dugong with microplastics in her body that died months after being rescued, Rendell speaks to the importance of direct experience in galvanizing people to take action. “People obviously will say that plastic is bad for the ocean, it’s bad for marine life, which is true, but I’ve actually seen animals die,” he says. “To be able to see that, it’s a great impact on the way you think.”