Olanike Olugboji-Daramola

Olanike Olugboji-Daramola (born 1 July 1974) is a Nigerian conservationist, environmental rights advocate, social entrepreneur, and writer. She is the founder and program director of the Women Initiative for Sustainable Environment (WISE), a non-profit organization that promotes environmental sustainability and empowers women to become environmental stewards, climate actors, and peace builders. In 2006, she was one of the founding members of WEA, the Women's Earth Alliance.

Quotes

• Yes. So, over the years, women have kind of been laid back and marginalized because of the traditional system that does not give them a place at the decision making table. It has been quite endemic and the message we’ve been carrying to most women in the communities is that we do not really have to wait to be called to the table: we can create our own table and begin to work from there.

Over time, women became more informed, more equipped with knowledge, information and skills that helped them have an impact on their communities. They get noticed and I believe that has contributed to pave the way for women to become relevant within the sustainable development and gender issues. For now I wouldn’t say that there are more women. I have quite a number of other women and girls who see me as a role model for them and that has also help them to become more interested in issues around sustainable development, gender and equity. We have quite a number of women groups that are registered within our organization and we continue to support them with agency and different interventions that we continue to launch as we continue to drive the cause that we represent.

• Yes. When we initially launched out it was quite challenging to get people to understand what we were actually trying to do. Particularly because Nigeria is culturally speaking very much patriarchal. When I launched out, I got challenged by some men who felt like: “what are you doing, you’re just a women, you should not be doing this, you won’t find a husband, etc”. Also, it was strange to find a woman who was working with a major government agency that works around the issues of environment. I actually thought for a women to find someone like me doing what I was doing, that she was going to be very supportive but rather I got challenged by her asking me if I was going to take over the assignment, the task of the government agency. And I said no I was only working toward complementing their effort across the communities that they also covered. But over time, we have been able to penetrate communities and also get a lot of men to endorse the work that we were doing not just by exploring gender responsive approaches to our work but also preaching the message of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the light that it is not a competition or contest between men and women but rather a collaboration, a partnership to make life better for men, women, children, households, communities. And with that approach, we’ve been able to get a lot of men supporting our work and also helping us carry the message to their wives, their mothers and their daughters.

Response to the question- Do you find it difficult to make your strategies effective?

• We do a lot of advocacy. We disseminate information. We form these women into groups. We conduct a lot of trainings. We build the capacities of these women around various areas of interests. For example, we have the WISE women’s clean cookstove entrepreneurship and training program that focuses on building the capacities of women to become clean cookstove entrepreneurs and advocates. To make sure that they would educate people in their community on the negative impact of deforestation, reliance on the traditional methods of cooking which are not energy efficient and also led to the deaths of so many women. We do training, we do advocacy, we do awareness creation, we do digital empowerment training because we believe that, in the times that we’re in, digital literacy is key for women to become more informed and also for creating visibility around the solutions that they are proffering in their community. So, these are some of the activities and strategies that we explore.
• From the beginning, it was just something I was passionate about and I did a bit of consulting work that has helped me earn an income. I channelled part of that income to launching the ideas that I had. Over time, as the work continued to grow I had family members who were also supporting me and then in 2007 I found World Pulse. I had become connected to Women Earth Alliance which was then Women Global Green Action Network. In 2005, Women Global Green Action Network launched a search for women who were working on issues around environmental justice and social justice around the world and I was one of the women that were invited for the first strategic meeting in Mexico though I didn’t make it but I kept in touch with the organizers and eventually one of the organizers launched the women earth alliance and I am a funding member of the Women Earth Alliance which has been a formal partner and founder of WISE. I think our first funding support came through Women Earth Alliance. From way back, in 2005 when we got fund by Women Global Green Action Network and we got connected with World Pulse, that has continued to create visibility for our work and also attract funders. We’ve benefited from funding support from Women Earth Alliance, Global Greengrants Funds, we’ve benefited from capacity building support from Women Leaders for the World. We’ve gotten support from UNDP, a project funded by the United Nations development program and global program facility. Recently we’ve also be funded by Global Funds for Women.. Funding of WISE.

• It is not just about addressing every environmental challenges we find but more of those that directly affect the lives of women across communities because there are facts that tell that women are the most affected by environmental challenges. For example, the issue of access to clean cooking energy; the facts and figures around the health consequences and the environmental consequences; women tracking as much as 2 km or more from their communities just to go and gather firewood for their cooking. And in the process of doing this, a lot of them get assaulted, some of them get raped, some of them get kidnapped. At the end of the day, no one is talking about these issues. So, we started looking at working with women across communities to see how they can be at the front lines of addressing these environmental challenges that have a direct impact on their life or the life of their family members and their communities. . What WISE is all about.

• World leaders must integrate women in their decision.

• One of the reports that caught our attention was the World Health Organisation’s reports which said Nigeria tops the list of countries where women were dying annually from smoke related illnesses.

• Over the years the women’s voices have been missing from the decision making tables.

• They are however able to take actions by either creating their own spaces to make changes or becoming authors of their own change.

• Women should stop emphasising they are being marginalised, that is an expired message.

• We should be authors of our own change, if we are not called to the decision making tables, then we must create ours.

• We believe that the more informed women get, the more equipped they are financially and in terms of skills, the better the society will be.

• The call for women’s empowerment is therefore not a contest between men and women, but a call for partnership, a call for a society where everybody’s voice counts, where we know that We all need each other.

• By inspiring understanding and appreciation for investment in women and women’s inclusion, we contribute to creating a better world.

• The business I did last before meeting WISE was storage of ginger. I took a loan from a cooperative and invested in it, that year ginger fell far below cost price and I was only able to get not up to ten per cent of my capital.