Nellie Shute ’20

Alumna

Teenage alumna Nellie Shute ’20 has been acknowledged internationally for her campaigns to save endangered elephants.

When Nellie was in Grade 5, she spearheaded a campaign at HKIS, persuading the school to stop using ivory for so-called educational purposes. Later, she was a driving force in gathering signatures for a petition calling for Hong Kong to destroy its stockpile of seized illegal ivory – something the government agreed to in 2015.

Her story was featured in the book “It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going!” by Chelsea Clinton, which draws attention to global problems and shows how people can make a difference. “Through all her efforts, Nellie helped bring more awareness to the threat that elephant poaching – and ivory demand – are to the elephant’s survival,” wrote Clinton.

Nellie’s proud mother Katrina Shute recalled that Nellie has always had a strong social conscience towards the environment, other people, and particularly animals. “As a child, she would pick caterpillars off the ground and put them in trees to stop them being accidentally squashed. When she was ten she started volunteering at the Stanley Dog shelter. It was this empathy for animals which led to her determination to ‘do something’ about the slaughter of African elephants fuelling the ivory trade in Hong Kong and China.”

Katrina added that since moving back home to Adelaide, Australia, last year, Nellie has done several talks to school kids about how they too can make real change with whatever cause they might choose. “Nellie has learned so many valuable life lessons from her efforts, the most important one being that you are never too young to make a difference.”