Abi Taylor is President of Durham University Students’ Union and one of Operation Noah’s newest trustees. This is the first in a series in which newly appointed trustees share their campaigning journeys.

Hi, I am Abi Taylor and I am the newest member of the board of trustees at Operation Noah. 

I’m currently the President of Durham Students’ Union and love my job fighting for students’ rights, but it’s a particular joy to spend part of my time supporting such a fired up climate charity like Operation Noah.

I’m sure like many of the people reading this blog, I have carried a horrible, heavy feeling in my chest ever since the urgency of the climate crisis was first articulated to me. It’s quite unlike anything we face as a society given its irreversible nature, and I have found it terrifying and debilitating to carry around with me. But the antidote to hopelessness is always action, and this trusteeship is a really important part of that in my journey.

It’s so funny writing about my journey to this trusteeship given I’m only 21, so I hope you’ll humour me!

But here is a bit of my story. 

I was a passionate climate activist as a student, leading Durham’s biggest environmental campaigning group. We pushed for fossil fuel companies to be cut from our careers fairs and for the University to divest from Barclays Bank, the number one fossil fuel investor in Europe. My time as a student led to me connecting with a wide range of climate charities, from Uplift to Global Justice Now and People and Planet. 

But alongside this, I was struggling with the number of Christian friends who refused to engage with issues of social justice and only preached a ‘me and Jesus’ theology. It made me angry and left me feeling isolated and confused: was this Jesus who I thought had given me this deep heart for justice and love for my global neighbour actually just a middle class apologist? 

Then through a friend I got completely wrapped up in the world of Just Love, a charity supporting Christian students to pursue a call to social justice in the way of Jesus. I became Just Love Durham’s publicity officer and was surrounded by the most fired up group of Christians – desperate to see God’s kingdom of justice, mercy and righteousness rein down in our city and across the world. We ran a whole range of campaigns throughout the year, some focused on our city and some the wider world and it led me to press more intentionally into where God was calling me to go after my degree. I knew I wanted to work in the climate sector and felt that horrible clock of climate goals ticking in the back of my mind constantly but didn’t know where to go! 

A good friend of mine was the Students’ Union President at the time and out of nowhere started intentionally asking me to run – something which I initially thought was hilarious and that I absolutely wasn’t going to do. Unfortunately for me, God seemed to have different plans and I couldn’t stop people having conversations about this with me until I thought, gosh, I probably should do something about this! 

I ran on a whole range of issues including University fossil fuel divestment and won, and I’ve been loving it ever since. We have already secured a £400,000 fossil fuel divestment from the Union and are working on the University as I write this article – I spend a lot of my time making the University CFO uncomfortable, working with student activists and writing finance committee papers! 

Over the summer I just so happened to get chatting to some Operation Noah staff at New Wine and signed up to their newsletter. I had been praying for more opportunities to get involved in fighting the climate crisis and supporting others to take action and then the trusteeship advertisement popped up on my email! 

Given I am a Gen Z girl myself, as well as a student politician, I have gotten skilled at social media engagement and knew this was something I could offer to Operation Noah to expand their campaign tactics. 

I am only a month in and I am already loving brainstorming with the team about the launch of our Instagram account – please go give us a follow! 

It’s such a joy that Operation Noah want to bring trustees into their work and already I’m feeling like a part of the charity. It has given me a sense of renewed hope and encouragement that Christians have the answer to the climate crisis in the radical, urgent, selfless love of Jesus. And through Him we have the chance to bring our climate back from the brink. If that opportunity to support Operation Noah comes up like it did for me I strongly suggest you take it! I’m loving it!