In 2007, most people were using YouTube to watch caught-on-camera viral videos. Miriam Nielsen, however, was on YouTube to find community and a creative outlet. That’s exactly how she found the Project for Awesome.
Project for Awesome (P4A) is an event organized by The Foundation to Decrease World Suck, in which participants raise awareness and funds for charitable organizations through the medium of online video.
Miriam decided to make her first video for the fundraiser in 2010. “I filmed it in my grandmother's basement on my dad's camera,” she recalled.
As her YouTube channel grew, Miriam made educational content about climate change with more context and color than news headlines alone. “When I started, there used to be almost no climate journalism on YouTube, and it was all buried in the science section... I tried to make it as informative and fun as I could,” she says.
Miriam's videos cover topics spanning from IPCC reports to fast fashion to eco-anxiety. She also submits videos nominating Earthjustice in P4A every year – resulting in a total of $170,000 in grant funding for Earthjustice since 2016.
Nowadays, Miriam studies compound hydrological extremes as a PhD student in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. She still makes videos as much as her research allows, and her most recent upload is the 2024 Project for Awesome video for Earthjustice!
To check out this video and others, visit Miriam’s channel @zentouro on YouTube.