Raymond Origbo – Climate Activist from Africa – Reshaping HE

Reviewed and edited by Dr Teeroumanee Nadan

I am Raymond Origbo, a Forestry and Wood Technology student at the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria. I am a nature and a climate change activist, environmental educator/ scientist, researcher, and my interest stemmed from my desire to conserve nature, help restore the landscape, create a sustainable environment and to mitigate climate change. I am a result-oriented and innovative Climate Change student and a changemaker with years of experience in climate change. I am a certified student of Oxford School of Climate Change with a considerable knowledge and experience gained from experts from the University of Oxford, UK. I have experience and certifications from Yale school of environment, Cornell university, United Nations, UNEP, etc., in increasing the resilience of sustainability systems in the face of climate change, and minimizing greenhouse gas emission.

My international career so far

I was shortlisted for the 2020/2021 Erasmus ka+ mobility program scheme in Spain where my passion to be a changemaker was realized. I learnt about Environmental education and Environmental Impact assessment from top professors at the Universidad de Jaen, Spain. I wrote papers and also designed projects which are reduction in stopover of aircraft to reduce carbon footprint, plastic pollution in Africa, reduction of cigarette butts on the street of Andalucia and environmental education.
I am currently part of the Ocean Leaders in Aqualword, where I carried out projects by teaching students in schools on the impact of plastic pollution on the environment and the ocean. I created an awareness to market women on plastics pollution and taught kids how to make crafts with plastics to mitigate the menace in our environment. I engaged in plastic mop up in Ilaje community, Nigeria and different rural communities in Ondo, Nigeria.
Alongside I am also a trainee in the Ocean wise Innovator Lab, Canada where I learnt about ocean plastic pollution and entrepreneurship. I delivered and carried out a project on an innovation by using plastic bottles to make sea raft so as to mitigate plastic pollution in the community.
I am an active member of IFSA dedicated to combat deforestation and climate change. I am currently a climate leader from Climate Education Leadership programme and I have impacted youths on social media on climate education, climate change. I want to carry out some activities by reaching out to students in primary and secondary schools by teaching them on climate education and actions to take to mitigate climate change.

The advantage of having a mentor

I connected with Dr. Teeroumanee Nadan on LinkedIn and that marked the beginning of a new dawn. Although I was seeking voluntary work, she preferred to mentor me rather than exploit my skills for free. After starting to be mentored by her, I reflected on showcasing myself more online by pushing out contents on climate change, climate education. I refurbished my Twitter and my LinkedIn accounts by engaging with other people’s post, sharing their posts and also writing my own reflections to their post as well to ensure visibility. Dr Nadan taught me how to gain visibility on different platforms, how to talk to people online, what to add to spice up my LinkedIn account and she told me this is the time to share my story to the whole world and ever since then, I took my growth seriously by gaining visibility in the climate space and so far, I have put up engaging post on climate change mitigation and adaptation on Twitter, LinkedIn and that got a lot of engagement from other climate activist, scholars reaching out for collaboration and climate experts getting to know me for what I do. The result so far has been overwhelming by a lot of people reaching out for collaboration. I feel supported and her mentorship has pushed me to become better in my niche. She said and I quote ” if you are dedicated to your work, you will become the golden son of the world”.

My aspirations

As part of the mentoring, I have been finetuning my career aspirations. This can be summed up as being a well-rounder researcher in the field of forest bio-economy, sustainable nature management and forest policy/conservation. I am also aiming at becoming a political figure who can influence environmental policies in reducing greenhouse gases emissions and climate change mitigation and adaptation, work with an international organization, United Nations to create a sustainable environment, influence decisions and policies on creating Net-zero emission globally. I also aim to have an industry contributing to a bio-economy to mitigate climate change and be a climate activist.

As a climate educator, I recently started a webinar series targeted at youths and secondary school students by bringing different speakers to teach them on climate change, climate education leading to environmental restoration, actions to take to mitigate climate change and also to share their stories to impact the younger generations on how to be a climate activist and climate educator as well. https://bit.ly/CELFR

My desire is to impact a lot of young children on climate change and climate education and to be a climate activist as well that will advocate against climate change. I believe education is one of the keys to tackle climate change. Education is how we are going to decarbonize the economy, protect and restore ecosystems, and biodiversity. So I thought on creating animation videos to teach children on climate change where they can learn in their best way and have a YouTube channel where they can have access to watch and learn with their parents.

So far, that is me, and I look forward to sharing more updates on my work via this blog space!

Acknowledgment:

I thank my mentor Dr Teeroumanee Nadan for guiding me in writing this blog, and for reviewing, editing, and adding information to this blog to make it suitable for publication.