When Amara Nwuneli was displaced by catastrophic floods in 2020, she was spurred into action.
The then-12-year-old founded a nongovernmental organization, Preserve Our Roots, which aims to educate young people on environmental issues and empower them to take local climate action.
Now 17, Nwuneli's not slowing down. She recently converted a former dump in Nigeria into a playground using all recycled materials, according to Business Insider. To make playground staples like swing sets and climbing walls, she used metal, wood, and tires lying around a landfill.
Since the area is flood-prone, she and a team of volunteers planted hundreds of flood-resistant trees, protecting the neighborhood and giving it some much-needed green space.
"I remember when the children were like, 'Now something we can actually call beautiful,'" Nwuneli told Business Insider. "It kind of broke my heart."
It's this dedication to helping local children and the ecosystem that earned her recognition from The Earth Prize, an organization that awards funding to trailblazing youth in the climate space.
She has three more parks in the works, telling Business Insider that her biggest plan is to convert a Lagos landfill.
Landfills have a devastating impact on the environment. According to the University of Colorado, Boulder, the release of large amounts of methane gas traps heat in the atmosphere, further warming the planet and leading to more extreme natural disasters such as floods.
Landfills also directly harm the people who live closest to them. According to a case study published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, those who live near landfills are more likely to fall ill, reporting less satisfaction in their day-to-day lives than those who live farther away.
Projects like Nwuneli's are crucial for revitalizing communities' mental, physical, and environmental health, all of which are intrinsically linked. As she told Business Insider, "I'm not satisfied. I feel like every community needs this."
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