Age
13
Country of Residence
Nigeria
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
On my way to and from school, I come across refuse dump sites. These sites smell and are not pleasant to see. I find the smell very disturbing, and it affects my father's car. Sometimes, the dump sites hide sharp objects that scratch the chassis of our car and even puncture our tires. They also contribute to illnesses in the community, which in turn affect learners and their school attendance. People often choose to burn these refuse dumps, and this causes air pollution in the neighborhood, making it difficult for people to breathe. I know that air pollution can cause many respiratory illnesses. The accumulation of waste also leads to other environmental hazards, like flooding and erosion, which can make roads inaccessible to cars and pedestrians. The accumulated waste can also be a hideout for harmful animals such as snakes, scorpions, rabid dogs, and even bad people.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
1. Periodic Sensitizing of stakeholders 2. Regular sharing of feedback 3. Special Campaigns 4. Writing to and gaining approval from the ministry of environment 5. Stakeholder engagement programs and activities 6. Ensuring that project plans are implemented, so people see impact and are drawn to the project
How many people are on your team?
8
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Our project is still young. The overall impact we will achieve are 1. Improve sanitary conditions of our school community 2. Improve attendance rate of our learners 3. Improved road infrastructure in our school. The following are the measurable objectives: Household Infrastructure Deployment: Distribute 10 color-coded, labeled sorting bins across 5 pilot households by the end of Week 4, achieving 100% initial participant setup without exceeding weekend hours. Sorting Accuracy & Diversion: Achieve a minimum 90% waste sorting accuracy rate across pilot homes during bi-weekly spot checks between Weeks 5 and 8, completely diverting organic waste from open burning. Bio-Fertilizer Production: Produce at least 15 kg of mature organic compost for the school STEM garden by Week 10 through low-touch bucket composting. Upcycled Asset Creation: Convert at least 50 post-consumer plastic bottles into 15 functional items (pen holders, flower pots, broom mounts) across 2 school club periods by Week 7. Community Outreach & Knowledge Scaling: Deliver bilingual waste-management guides to 20 households and execute a repeat survey by Week 10 to measure shifts in community burning and dumping practices.
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
"Clean Pejuola" is a 6-month, student-led environmental-protection initiative designed to solve environmental pollution issues by introducing household waste sorting, plastic upcycling, and organic composting in Pejuola, Abeokuta, while protecting student well-being through a balanced weekend workload.
Project title
Clean Pejuola
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Household waste management in Pejuola suffers from systemic non-sorting. Residents dump food peels, plastic, nylon, and metallic tins together into single containers or open spaces. Lacking segregated collection, many residents burn refuse openly, releasing toxic smoke that causes coughs, eye irritation, and respiratory problems. Plastic and nylon waste accumulates in gutters, blocking water flow during rains and causing stagnant water pools that breed mosquitoes, spreading malaria across the community. This localized challenge reflects a wider national crisis. Nigeria generates over 32 million tonnes of solid waste annually, with less than 20% formally collected and over 80% disposed of in unmanaged dumpsites or open environments. At the community level in Pejuola, preliminary observations indicate zero formal waste segregation at the household level. My community is very important to me, and I want it to be better than it is in this regard. I do not want my classmates to miss school because of the flooding, erosion, or even illnesses caused by this condition. I also want us to learn better, because the smells affect us during classes and distract us all the time. I also want people's cars to stop getting damaged as they use the roads, like my father's car.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Weeks 1–3: Baseline Survey & Diagnostics (Saturdays Only) The 8-member student team splits into pairs to survey 20 households across three Saturdays (7 homes per Saturday, ~1.5 hours/day) to document disposal habits, burning frequency, and drainage obstruction severity. Weeks 4–8: Pilot Infrastructure & Setup (Weekend & Club Hours) Students label 20buckets during school club hours. Dual-stream bins (Green for Organic; Red for Non-Organic) are distributed to 5 pilot households on Saturday, accompanied by a brief 10-minute sorting demonstration per home. Tasks are delegated evenly across all 6 team members. Weeks 9–12: Low-Touch Monitoring, Composting & Plastic Upcycling Student team members conduct 15-minute weekly spot-checks during weekend strolls to measure sorting accuracy. Organic waste is brought to the school STEM garden bucket site twice weekly (10 minutes after school).
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
Unlike other solutions, We are building a community of problem solvers with this project. We are also improving our climate by moving the biodegradable wastes to our green garden as manures. This is how we fight global warming in our own way. This project is also unique, because it ensures that nothing is wasted. All the waste products are not destroyed but made useful again. Also our project is aimed at teaching and Educating people. In this way, we are not only impacting, but also impacting lives. We also hope to imbibe the culture of collaboration and impact on the stakeholders involved. Our stakeholders includes my classmates, School mates,parents, community members among others. We also aim to have a partnership with the Government at the later stages of the pilot program. These will make the project sustainable and impactful
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
I will solve this Problem by providing a solution that is not only sustainable, but also collaborative. The name of the solution project is Clean Pejuola. It solves the problem by cleaning the environment, establishing cleaner refuse disposal systems, sensitizing people on safe refuse disposal and the recycling of the waste materials. “Clean Pejuola” establishes a localized, low-cost circular waste economy, driven by secondary school students using accessible, repurposed community materials (buckets, cartons, plastic bottles, peels, and leaves). Instead of merely advising residents against littering, the project demonstrates a complete “waste-to-wealth” cycle. Sorted food waste is converted into compost for the school STEM Garden, and PET plastic bottles are upcycled into pen holders, flower pots, and broom mounts. A low-cost guide in English and Yoruba ensures every household can easily follow the system. This project also encouraged green-living, by putting the bio- degradable wastes into manures and fertilizers for the already-existing STEM garden that I, and my colleagues are running. The non degradable wastes are recycled and sold, or used for usable things and decoration. The funds gotten will be used to scale the project to other communities.
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
We plan to have a team of 8 persons. Fikayomi Obadina(Team lead): Coordinates the team activities and tracks progress Shalom Oluwafemi: Source Materials Tunmise Ayodeji: Sending and collating surveys Hamid Arola: In charge of the bio degradable wastes Ewaoluwa Showole: Identification of beneficiaries Basit Shuaib: Photography, and impact documentation Adesoji Adeayomi: Documenting Project activities Busayo Akinmade: Bio degradable wastes sorting
