Folashade Molade: Environmentalist raising awareness against human induced pollution in Port-Harcourt

My name is Folashade Molade from Nigeria. CEO at Futuresavers Sustainable Development Initiative, a Non-Governmental organization established for promoting and projecting actions targeted towards the environment and climate change. I am the first child of my family and another interesting part of Fola is that she is a fashion designer and owns a clothing feet called ‘Slammin Stitches’. At my undergraduate level, I had studied Environmental Management and toxicology.

PASSION

I can say that the ‘Environment’ had called me, reasons being that, after highschool I had wanted to go into the University to study Medicine but as fate would have it, I got admitted for Environmental Management and hence the beginning of the passion to save the planet. After University I went ahead to serve in the nation’s National Youth Service and was posted to Port-Harcourt, a city popularly known for its oil exploration and consequently, environmental degradation. A larger percentage of Nigeria’s crude oil is situated in the region, hence its heavy exploration.

This was the beginning of my awareness about climate change, especially the aspect of human induced climate change, which was visibly seen with evidence of soot in the atmosphere. Air pollution in Port-Harcourt is at its all-time high as exploration activities are carried out daily. This situation is rather appalling as there are no enforcement on the regulations or checks by the government on these oil companies as to what level of toxic gas emissions is permissible to be released into the atmosphere, as at when and where. The terrible effect of this situation in this region, is that its inhabitants have limited access to good water and the land had been degraded as a result of the deposited heavy metals from the exploration thereby making food production very low.

I saw a need to be a voice for the people of Port-Harcourt and others living in states with similar human induced environmental pollution in Nigeria. But I couldn’t do much since I had only a year to spend there.

My passion wouldn’t allow me have a peace of mind. Just like a proverbs says, ” a man with ambition cannot sleep”. Then I thought of creating my own NGO.

PROBLEM

Most individuals in my country are not climate or environmental conscious. They don’t see how much they are damaging the environment and how in turn that they are the causes of environmental issues such as flooding, wildfires and the rest. Then, I thought to myself, if children in primary and secondary schools were enlightened about the environment and climate change at their level, then when they grow up they will be able to make better informed choices and policies that will favour the environment and live sustainably.

SOLUTION

To tackle this problem, the idea was to ‘catch the children young’ through proper knowledge dissemination in the schools by the creation of climate clubs and introducing environmental studies into the educational syllabus. I was set to create my NGO and have it running and something amazing happened. A climate workshop was going on that month and the organizers had selected youths that were actively working and volunteering in the various environmental sector for the summit. We were a selected few, less than 20 of us. The speaker’s at the summit that day had discussed extensively on the need to form allies, partnering with people that you share the same goals and visions witg so that what is created can last longer and stand the test of time. It was at the meeting that myself and Seyi Olowu, the founder of Futuresavers Sustainable Development Initiative connected. After the meeting, we had discussed and I discovered that everything I had wanted to do with the NGO I was about creating was what Seyi had ongoing with his NGO. And that was how I came onboard.

There was no need for me to create my own thing but rather put the same energy into the platform that had already been created. Since we both want to attain the same results for the planet. And frankly speaking, I couldn’t have attained the feets presently tagged to my accomplishments if I had  started my own NGO because like they say, two heads are better than one. Your weakness could be the other person’s strength and vice versa.

Today in Nigeria, FSDI is recognized as one if not the first organization that carried out the climate strike and the pioneer of the climate club. Amongst many other accomplishments associated to the organization. Thank you.

You can contact me through:

E-mail: fsmolade@gmail.com

Facebook: Molade Folashade

WhatsApp: +234 803 942 5515

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