Art is often recognized as a form of expression, yet it goes beyond that—it can also positively impact the environment and inspire others. The Eunice Amoka-Bankole Street Dreams Project is dedicated to this purpose. This project uses the power of art and storytelling to empower young women to champion profitable environmental projects in their communities.
We kicked off the Street Dreams Project in 2017 by training 10 young women in the Niger Delta region in photography skills, participants were also provided with digital cameras, setting them up for a sustainable and profitable photography business.
We recently concluded phase two of the Street Dreams Project and this time our goal was to target litter and throw-away culture in the Imafon community a rural community with with over 500 residents in Ondo state, Nigeria. Plastic pollution is a pressing issue in this community heightened by the presence of a government waste yard. This project was funded by the Ashoka-UPS Accelerator Impact Fund and in partnership with Durian Nigeria.
We did this starting with an advocacy outreach to Imafon community and the neighboring communities, to familiarize ourselves with the community working with the community leaders. In typical susty fashion, these sessions usually involved collaborative games aimed at creating a lively atmosphere and an interactive talk by our project managers.
We met about 120 people in these outreaches and many of them mentioned that they had never seen plastic used for anything useful aside from dumping.
Following the sensitization, we built the Eunice Amoka Bankole Street Dreams Project Upcycling and Weaving training center to make learning more accessible in Imafon community, the space has a complete set of floor lap looms, 50 small lap looms, two sewing machines, weaving threads, scissors, and tape rules and will be used continuously by the community women and for future upcycling workshops.
The training session was for one week from the 16th to the 21st of October with 55 women and girls many of whom were unemployed and had no prior knowledge of upcycling. The sessions were facilitated by our friends from the Women to Resource Empowerment Team (WREP) team of Ecobarter.
They went from learning the fundamentals and theories of weaving to practical weaving sessions. Agnes, one of the participants, admitted to being surprised that we could make a bag from waste nylon and thanked the team for the opportunity to learn. Recently, we’ve also received more inspiring testimonials from women whose lives were positively impacted by the project.
We are super grateful to our partners, sponsors, and volunteers. We’re looking forward to seeing these 55 women thrive in their businesses and passing down the knowledge learned.
