A Mission to Rehabilitate Nigeria’s Waterways One Beach at a Time

When she was a child, Doyinsola Ogunye’s father hoped she’d become a lawyer. He even dreamed of her becoming a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. And that’s what might have happened until Ogunye relocated to another part of Lagos State. “It was very dirty,” she remembers. “I wasn’t used to that amount of filth and that was what triggered my interest in the environment.” In 2009, while still at university, Ogunye started the Kids Clean Club in order to teach children and teens about the importance of caring for the environment. This still often isn’t a concern in daily Nigerian life. The initiative focuses on tree planting, recycling and removing trash from coast lines across Nigeria’s commercial capital city of Lagos, with the objective of instilling in young participants, mainly from schools and communities near to beaches, a heightened sense of responsibility towards the environment. A member of the Recyclers Association of Nigeria, Ogunye has partnered with the Lagos State government, companies and cooperatives to create public awareness on ways to generate wealth through recycling plastics, glass bottles, wood, compost and paper liable to end up in landfills. Similarly, she is working to expand the Kids Clean Club to 20 locations around Lagos State in an effort to reach more kids for the purpose of educating them on the environment and the benefits of recycling.

SOURCE: TRUE AFRICA