Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO) is a youth-led advocacy group based in Ghana. It was founded in 2014 by

Joshua Amponsem Joshua Amponsem (born 1991) is a Ghanaian climate advocate and a co-founder of Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO). He is the climate specialist at the Office of the UN Secretary General's Envoy on Youth. He is the Lead Author of Adapt for ...

and Desmond Alugnoa. The group focuses on

environmental sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...

and community improvement. GAYO aims is to inspire young people to participate in climate activism and foster climate leadership in

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

. GAYO also provides environmental blogs. GAYO established the first Youth Climate Council in Africa to provide climate skills to young people when it launched the council in 2021 in Ghana.

Founders

Joshua Amponsem is a Ghanaian

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...

activist and the Climate Lead at the UN Secretary General’s Youth Envoy office. Since a young age, he has been assisting climate-affected communities in

. Being an advisor to the UN Youth Envoy’s office, he facilitated the first UN Youth Climate Summit. Joshua was one of the speakers at the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

’s Annual Meeting in Davos in 2022. Desmond Alugnoa was a farmer in northern Ghana. His work started in 2012 with an emphasis on environmental preservation, climate

adaptation In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...

, and

community development The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists ...

Projects and Initiatives

Sustainable Community Project

GAYO’s sustainable community project is a community-based waste management project in the South district of Ghana. The project includes members-led activities such as composting, recycling arts, and producing

charcoal Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents. In the traditional version of this pyrolysis process, cal ...

briquettes from agricultural waste. The project aims to create a zero-waste model for African rural-urban areas. The project has achieved significant results within the short period of its initiation. The project also procured safe water to over 100 women within the Kandiga-Kurugu rural population.

Zero Waste Strategy

GAYO has been working with La Dade Kotopon Municipal Assembly (LaDMA) to implement Zero Waste Accra Project to promote zero waste practices across municipalities.

Sustainable Sanitary Products & Period Poverty

GAYO partnered with PeriodLink for the menstrual justice movement. Both youth-supported organizations raised funds to train women in Northern Ghana to build better careers. The project educated teachers and pupils on menstrual health and period poverty across the upper-east region of northern Ghana.

Campus Eco Clubs

GAYO initiated campus echo clubs in Ghanaian universities to educate youth on

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

problems. Some of the participating universities were the University of Cape Coast (UCC), the University of Ghana (LEGON), the University of Developmental Studies (UDS), and Kwame Nkrumah University of

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

and

Technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

(KNUST). The GAYO eco clubs called for drastic action on

plastic waste Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles (e.g. plastic bottles, bags and microbeads) in the Earth's environment that adversely affects humans, wildlife and their habitat. Plastics that act as pollutants are catego ...

as a part of the Zero Waste Strategy.

References

{{Reflist Non-governmental organizations Non-profit organisations based in Ghana Environmental organisations based in Ghana Youth-led organizations