Ecological Renewal Project

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The Ecological renewal project seeks to solve the challenges posed by the use of non-renewable energy sources, improper waste disposal, soil degradation, green house emission and poor or low standard of living. These problems impact the world at large and Nigeria is no stranger to it foot prints. Deforestation has destroyed the local habitat of wild life in Nigeria, increased biodiversity lost and heightened the effect of greenhouse gas emission. Poor waste management on the other hand contributes to soil contamination, releases methane which is a potent greenhouse gas that amplifies the effect of climate change and global warming. Poor standard of living hinders sustainable development, causes lack of opportunity for social economic development.

According to report by World bank, Nigeria has lost 96% of its natural forest, the report also states that deforestation contributes to 11% of the global greenhouse emission, methane gas accounts for 16% of global greenhouse emission. According to a report published in The News Agency of Nigeria, it disclosed that no fewer than 1,000 houses were destroyed on the 4th April, 2024 in Nasarawa state due to wild storm and this has become a regular occurrence in Nigerian cities and villages. Within the FCT alone at least 200 buildings are lost to wild storm on a yearly basis since 2016. Another report by World bank has revealed that Nigeria is the highest emitter of methane gas in Africa caused by improper waste management and unsustainable Agricultural practices. According to National bureau of Statistics 87.4 million Nigerians are living in extreme poverty as reported in the year 2022. Nigeria contributes to at least 12% of the global poverty population.

Ecological Renewal Project is the proposed solution to the above stated Problems. It is an innovative solution with the following stages such as;

• Effective biodegradable waste management through Biogas and Organic fertilizer production that is sustainable for household, commercial and agricultural use.
• Tree planting
• Community empowerment.

Effective waste management: This is possible through an effective waste management approach such as early waste sorting and collection.

Biogas production: implementing biogas technology to provide a low-cost renewable energy source hence, reducing the dependence on fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy sources.

Organic fertilizer: Organic fertilizer helps to boost food production and provide more environmentally friendly fertilizer obtained from anaerobic compost as a source of fertilizer in agricultural production. This will ensure food security and replenish lost soil properties as opposed to chemical fertilizers.

Tree planting: As tree grows they help to reduce climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing the carbon dioxide into the soil and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. The project seeks to encourage planting of economic trees.

Community Empowerment:  by training and equipping communities to take initiative in the production and use of biogas and planting of economic trees, this project will help reduce or eradicate poverty within the host communities where the project will be implemented.

The project adopt Anaerobic digestion system (ADS) that uses biodegradable waste to produce biogas used as a source of energy for cooking replacing fossil fuel and other non renewable energy sources. The anaerobic digestion system produces a bio-product in the form of compost manure that helps replenish lost soil nutrient.  As trees grow, they help stop climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in the soil and releases oxygen into the atmosphere.

The project is targeted at a  Dafara village, a local community in Kuje Area council of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, Nigeria which has a population of about 5000 people made up of mostly women and children. This region has been hit hard by the effect of deforestation and climate change with frequent reported cases of wild storm destroying houses on a yearly basis and temperatures rising to unexpected levels with the city.

The Project Ecological renewal promises to proffer a systematic solution to the challenges confronting the host community using a bottom- top approach which allows decision making to be in the hands of the participants/beneficiaries and the community dwellers. The projects aims to impact the host community in the following ways:

•  To provide a cheaper source of energy via the use of biogas: implementing biogas technology to provide a low-cost renewable energy source hence, reducing the dependence on fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy sources.
•  To boost food production and provide more environmentally friendly fertilizer: The use of anaerobic compost as a source of fertilizer in agricultural production will ensure food security, and replenish lost soil properties as opposed to chemical fertilizers.
• To curb global warming and mitigate climate change: This is possible through an effective waste management approach coupled with tree planting (afforestation) to combat global warming such as early waste sorting and collection via the use of anaerobic waste digestion system.
• To create job opportunities and eradicate poverty: by training and equipping participant to take initiative in the production of biogas and planting of economic trees, this project will help reduce or eradicate poverty within the host communities where the project will be implemented.
• Improve standard of living: The increase in crop yield and food quality that will be achieved as a result of the implementation of this project will translate into increased income to the beneficiaries hence improving the standard of living.

Sahel International Support Foundation is a non-profit organization with the aim of achieving sustained wellbeing of people and communities within the Sahel region especially the most vulnerable and underserved. In the cause of her normal operation of carrying out interventions and researches, we stumbled upon Dafara community, a village located at the outskirt of Kuje area council in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Our observations and investigation reveals that the village has been plagued with the effect of deforestation and climate change, poor access to electricity, low standard of living and sub-standard educational facilities. Also our research shows that the primary occupation of the community dwellers is farming.

In the bid to respond to some of the above mentioned challenges, Sahel International support Foundation has intervened by way of a project titled "Student Shoe Intervention". The project was aimed at providing shoes for school children in the community who did not have footwear in Junior Secondary School Dafara, Kuje, Abuja. 

To tackle the issue of poor access to electricity, we have successfully distributed solar reading lamps to a number of students within the community.

With the above experience in serving the host community, we believe that we have the perquisite knowledge of their challenges hence, the solution we propose is in consultation with the host community. Also, our proximity to the community allows us to effectively monitor the progress of the proposed project in real-time.

The project Ecological renewal was conceptualized after a strategic assessment for an intervention that will cut across all the challenges confronting the proposed community of implementation. Though financial constraint have posed a stiff challenge, a prototype has been designed in collaboration with Heartitude Kitchen, a reputable restaurant in the FCT to test the viability of the proposed project's ability to produce an alternative source of energy for cooking and the result have been outstanding in reducing the gas consumption by 60kg every month. We have moved a step further by adopting the compost manure residue produced from our collaboration with Heartitude Kitchen as input in the implementation of our tree planting project in three (3) secondary schools within the FCT where we have planted over 100 trees and flowers this year 2024.

Hence our believe that our project in its prototype phase or stage.  

Sahel International Support Foundation as a non-profit organization, seeks collaboration with local and international organizations such as Solve in other to attain her goals of achieving a sustained well-being of people and communities in the Sahel region especially the most vulnerable, by ensuring that both children and adults over come poverty and experience fullness of life. 

To attain this objective, we seek such collaboration that will enhance our human capital capacity development for effective monitoring and evaluation, open-up avenues for opportunities of networking with the plethora of organizations and institutions at the disposal of solve MIT and also where necessary obtain assistance either in kind or cash to further boost our capacity to reach out to the underserved and the less privileged. 

Our solution is innovative because it make use of the basic equipment to produce a robust and lasting solution to a global challenge at minimum cost.

This is true to the fact that Anaerobic digestion has been in existence for thousands of years yet its role in fighting climate change and diversifying our energy sources has not been advocated by most organizations.

Also, the inclusion of economic tree planting in the solution ensures that the solution has a lasting impact beyond the project execution period of this project.       

The Ecological renewal projected has been designed in collaboration with the proposed participant addressing specific challenges  confronting the host proposed community.

The Project will affect the participant in the following ways:

• The project will increase the standard of living of the host community; this will be made possible through the knowledge that will be passed to them to impact the farming process, improve the crop yield, increase the income of participant.
• The introduction of biogas as an alternative source of cooking energy will help preserve the health of women that are mostly affected by the fume from the use of wood as a source of cooking energy 
• The use of manure from the bio-digester will not only increase the yield of crop farmers but also restore soil lost nutrient thereby preserving it for future generation.
• Economic tree planting which is an integral part of this project has lasting effect in fighting climate change and combating global warming through its conversion of carbon dioxide and release of oxygen into the atmosphere. This will help to lower the risk of wild storm that has been a mane in the community and also serve as an alternative source of income.
• These benefits will serve as a motivation to the participant to continue with this environmentally friendly practices and pass them to the next generation thereby breeding a generation of people who will adopt these sustainable practices there by preserving our planet for the future generations.

Our solution is believed to be impactful when executed in the community.

This is because the project was not designed and imposed on the people, rather it was designed literally by the community through responses received from a survey carried out in the community by our team and our previous project executed in the community. Also, the project is designed to address real life challenges confronting the community in question hence it is most definite that when these challenges are removed, there will be drastic positive impact on the host community. 

The Ecological renewal project is designed to mitigate the effect of climate change by reducing carbon emission and reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Through a chain of biological processes, the project has the following impact goals to guide in measuring its success;

• Reduce Methane Emission: the proposed project aims to in the first year provide biogas cooking facilities for one hundred household within the host community, it is estimated that each household will produce and consume at least 2kg of biogas  on a daily basis. Our technology uses biodegradable waste as an input in the bio digester used in the production of bio gas production there by converting 73,000 kg of methane that would have been emitted into the atmosphere into cooking energy.
• Reduction in carbon emission: the proposed project intends to reduce green house emission by promoting the use of biogas in the community which will prevent over an estimated 32,850 tons of carbon from being released into the atmosphere. This estimate was arrived at from surveys that revealed that households consume at least 50tons of firewood on daily basis thereby emitting over 32,850 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from daily cooking.
• Empowerment and poverty reduction: The project has integrated economic and the use of compost as a source of manure for farming there by providing opportunity for the reduction of poverty through improved crop yield and subsequent sell of fruits from economic trees planted in the cause of its implementation.

These impact will be measured to ensure that the project is executed up to expectation in the following ways:

• Methane or greenhouse emission reduction would be measured through the volume of waste that will be used to produce bio-gas for cooking or other heating needs of the community, the project monitoring and evaluation team will keep track of the usages or the level of adoption by the community after the project has been implemented.
• Carbon dioxide emission will be measured by how many house holds sustain the use of bio-gas as a cooking sources of energy thereby abandoning the use of firewood which is a major source of carbon emission within the community.
• Poverty reduction will be measured through household income of participant and an observation of the current standard of living compared to the previous, this can be seen through new houses and other necessary facilities that are currently absent in the host community.

We believe that these impact goals and the performance indicators align with the purpose of this project and united nations sustainability development goals and support sustainable living.

The proposed solution uses bio-technology to address the challenges of climate change within the host community.

Anaerobic digestion which powers our solution is defined according to Wikipedia as a sequence of process by which microorganisms breakdown biodegradable materials in the absence of oxygen. This process can be used in domestic waste management or fuel generation.

Our solution seeks to achieve both waste management, fuel generation and compost for agricultural purpose. it would be safe to say our system uses a zero waste approach to tackle the effect of climate change.

The Project solution team featured basically four team members who are core staff of Sahel international support foundation, volunteers and other expert consultant.

Full Staff made up of the following:

1. Executive director

2. Program manager 

3. Project finance officer 

4. ICT officer

Volunteers would include the following

1. Volunteer program assistance 

2. Volunteer logistics officer

3. Volunteer technical assistance

Other experts 

1. Expert bioengineers

2. Consultant monitoring and evaluation team.

The proposed solution was conceptualized and has been worked on for over a year now. In the course of this period the organization has collaborated with Heartitude kitchen and Profit venture in Abuja to produce and test the prototype.

Sahel International support foundation provides equal opportunity to people of all races and color and does not discriminate against persons on the basis of age, gender or sex.

To actualize her mission, SISF hires and retain employees, and provide them benefits and rights under the guidelines of Nigerian labor law. Thus SISF is committed to: 
• Employing staff who are passionate about her cause, recognized for technical excellence, integrity and dedication; 
• Collaboration with colleagues on the basis of mutual respect and shared goals; 
• Providing a workplace that is professionally stimulating and supportive; 
• Ensuring the protection of the health, safety and welfare of men and women in her workplace
To actualize her mission, SISF will hire and retain employees, and provide them benefits and rights under the guidelines of Nigerian labor law. Thus SISF is committed to: 
• Employing staff who are passionate about her cause, recognized for technical excellence, integrity and dedication; 
• Collaboration with colleagues on the basis of mutual respect and shared goals; 
• Providing a workplace that is professionally stimulating and supportive; 
• Ensuring the protection of the health, safety and welfare of men and women in her workplace
To actualize her mission, SISF will hire and retain employees, and provide them benefits and rights under the guidelines of Nigerian labor law. Thus SISF is committed to: 
• Employing staff who are passionate about her cause, recognized for technical excellence, integrity and dedication; 
• Collaboration with colleagues on the basis of mutual respect and shared goals; 
• Providing a workplace that is professionally stimulating and supportive; 
• Ensuring the protection of the health, safety and welfare of men and women in her workplace.