Another girl who decided to get involved in the lack of clean water problem was Nalleli Codo. The reason that she decided to get involved was a little bit different. She saw problems having to her neighbors, her friends, her family, and even herself. She grew up in a low-income community Los Angeles right next to an oil company. The oil was getting into their water supply making a lot of people sick. She developed asthma and heart palpitations. And she wasn’t the only one. This was affecting the lives of many people in the community. Clean water is a human right that they were not receiving and that had a major impact on their health and well being. She started to get very involved in finding a solution to this problem but she was not getting the results that she wanted. Codo did not give up though. She handed out flyers and continued sharing her story. Eventually she caught the eye of a Senator Barbara Boxer who got the company to shut down until they made improvements. In the speech below Codo says, “Now I know that my words can make a difference...You can’t make change without making noise” . She decided that she is going to keep telling her story until someone listens and helps her community.
You can read more about Cobo's story at Univision.