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Cas­tel Gan­dol­fo, Italy—Nine­teen-year-old Priyan­ka Lal­la, UNICEF Youth Ad­vo­cate for the East­ern Caribbean, be­came the youngest in­vit­ed speak­er at the pres­ti­gious Rais­ing Hope Con­fer­ence, held at Pope Leo XIV’s Sum­mer Palace to mark the tenth an­niver­sary of Lauda­to Si’.

Rep­re­sent­ing UNICEF, Project Dan­de­lion, and “large ocean states”, Lal­la cham­pi­oned in­ter­gen­er­a­tional col­lab­o­ra­tion and “hope as a new form of lead­er­ship” be­fore glob­al faith, pol­i­cy and cli­mate lead­ers.

Lal­la was al­so the youngest per­son spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed to meet Pope Leo XIV. Her ad­dress drew from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence af­ter Hur­ri­canes Ir­ma and Maria, her chil­dren’s cli­mate book se­ries Svara’s Ad­ven­tures, and her work mo­bil­is­ing Caribbean youth across faiths to treat cli­mate ac­tion as a moral im­per­a­tive.