Report on Raise the Green Wall program held at Abeokuta Girls’ Grammar School, Abeokuta, Nigeria

Project Title:   “Raise the Green Wall”

In the view of the global move towards the sustenance of the future of our planet from the ravaging impact of climate change, there has been a tremendous build-up of activism portraying various levels of action all around the world and In a great deal of way the youths have been practically the solid backbone of these moves.

Raise the green wall represents one of the many projects of Green Impact International and it is an adapted program set to help educate and ignite the passion of youths towards ensuring their relative contributions as regards engaging in actions directed at protecting the future of our environment from the impact of climate change

Focus points

·         Climate smart orientation

·         Ecological footprint calculation

·         One student, one tree

The program was recently staged at Abeokuta Girls’ Grammar school, Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria with a total out of 80 students. The program was however divided into three sessions to allow for proper orientation:

assessment session: This session involved a survey exercise which was directed at assessing the prior knowledge of the students as regards their common perception on climate change. The following results were collated from the assessment:

1.       Considering the level of localized perception of changes as observed in the fluctuating weather pattern, 98% of the respondents affirmed the notion of having noted a level of fluctuation in local weather pattern while just 2% responded otherwise. (Figure1)

Figure 1

2.         A rather balanced percentage of responses were obtained in the view of elements to attribute the changes to. 50% responded on the side of natural pattern as the cause factor while the other 50% sided with Human activities as the main problem. (Figure 2)

Figure 2

3.        Every respondent agreed to the fact that the changes have had some effect on their surrounding environment, productivity and lifestyle. (Figure 3)

Figure 3

4.        The largest percentage of respondents have had the changes impacted their health overtime, while 14% responded to the impact as non-availability of food and 7% distinguished the impact as a livelihood support problem. (Figure 4)

Figure 4

5.        75% responded to personal efforts as the measures they have adopted to adjusting to the changes, 18% of the respondents have received some level of interventions from the government while just 7% were not certain they had received or adopted any means to adjusting to the changes. However, communal effort was largely missing from the familiar measures. (Figure 5)

Figure 5

6.       In assessing the respondents’ opinion on the best practice towards solving climate change, 68% sided with governmental interventions, 25% with personal efforts, 3% went for communal efforts, 2% however agreed that all the options should be considered and 2% of the respondents responded as not concerned.(Figure 6)

Figure 6

Conclusion

Notably, the assessment provided a basis of making some inferences on the perception of climate change among the students. In a very obvious way, a greater percentage quite agreed to that fact that some changes have occurred in the weather patterns and the changes have overtime had significant impact on a part of their lives (notably, Health). Although the changes were equally attributed as a shared one, a part on humans and the other on natural events but a point of certainty that a problem does exist was well grounded.On the part of measures taken up to adjusting to the changes, a lot of the respondents signified personal efforts which speaks loudly of a common scenario in a developing economy where primary public amenities and governmental interventions are lacking as a result of poor economic standing.  Upon the completion of the survey, a lot of the students agreed that governmental intervention remain the most formidable solution to solving the climate crisis while a rather small percentage gave a rather inspiring response of encouraging a total action from every angle of personal efforts, governmental interventions and communal efforts.

2^nd Session:  The second session was a predominantly sensitization phase aimed at helping the students in connecting the dots of their sketchy perceptions on climate change. The session involved a video viewing part (Impact of climate change around the world), teaching with power points (the basics of climate change and solutions) followed by question and answer segment.

The last session was the planting out part where every student had the opportunity of adopting and planting a tree on the already prepared field. We had a total of 80 trees planted to conclude the one day event.

More insightful details can be gleaned from the video recording of the event.
https://youtu.be/921G9nBUgrU