Sixteen-year-old Rebeca Sabnam, a Bangladeshi origin US citizen, stood in front of a crowd of thousands, recalling the times when her uncle had to carry her to school on his back during floods in Dhaka.
At the gathering, more than 200,000 people marched in Manhattan for an environmental demonstration for climate change in September, the teenager highlighted stories of a community that remains some of the most vulnerable to climate change, reports Al Jazeera.
"I am from Bangladesh, a country that exemplifies how interconnected the climate emergency is to racial justice and poverty," she said, referencing the discourse on how people of colour are often disproportionately affected by climate change.
Sabnam later told Al Jazeera she thought that when she mentioned Bangladesh, she would hear nothing but silence. Instead, she was overwhelmed by the crowd's roaring response.
"The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue, it's an urgent human rights issue," said Sabnam to the cheers of the crowd in New York.
"Bangladeshi women are extremely vulnerable to post displacement trafficking, magnified by the climate crisis," she said. "We want Bengali women as well as the Rohingya people living in Bangladeshi refugee camps to know that youth around the world are striking for their lives and security."
Sabnam, a high school student, lives in New York with her family, who migrated to the country when she was six years old.
World leaders have come together in Madrid, Spain, for the UN Climate Change Conference, COP25, where they will deliberate on the environmental crisis facing humanity.
TYING IN THE MOST VULNERABLE
COP25 is expected to focus on a range of issues such as the global tourism industry's work to implement climate-friendly initiatives, tracking progress on the Paris Climate Agreement 2016, an "Intergenerational Inquiry" where global leaders will meet youth activists leading the climate change conversation.
According to an April Unicef report, 19 million Bangladeshi children are at risk owing to climate change disasters such as floods and cyclones.
Sabnam says she hopes there will be more "urgency" than was expressed at COP24 last year.

"We want COP25 to not simply take note of [the] alarming data [on the rise in temperature], but to advocate for the end of the funding, expansion, and use of fossil fuel," she told Al Jazeera ahead of the two-week summit.
Sabnam highlighted her September speech in New York the need for an understanding of how the effects of climate change intersect with some of the most vulnerable communities around the world.
Experts agree, saying that women and the Rohingya community remain particularly vulnerable to similar risks.
For Sabnam, who is yet to finish school, this remains the focus of the journey ahead - how to figure out a way in which to use the current momentum to put Bangladeshi women, children, and Rohingya refugees at the forefront of the global climate change debate.
She said she is trying to make sure Bangladesh is not "forgotten along the way after the Climate Strike, and to make sure we keep consistently pushing for our demands and making sure it's not lost along the way."