WE DO GREEN

I am a climate crisis activist taking direct action through a tree-planting and community education organization, building sustainable peace in post-genocide Rwanda through ecological relationship-building. 

Since 2018, I have led We Do Green in educating over 6000 youth, engaging some 1000 local communities, and reaching audiences of more than 30000 people around the globe through my leadership in the 2020 World Conference on Science Literacy and the 2021 IUCN Global Youth Summit. 

We Do Green wants to ensure that every member of our local and global community is committed and equipped to play a key role in the sustainability challenge. We are especially focused on those who often get left behind, partnering with them to build capacity and amplify their voices. Being selected for the Elevate Prize would enable me to reach an additional 18,000 youth in Rwandan schools, as well as empower another 7,000 local climate-vulnerable women, over the next 4 years. By doing so, We Do Green will make a lasting contribution to our country’s ongoing reconciliation from the 1994 genocide while positively impacting our ecosystems through sustainable justice.

Even though I grew up in the countryside, I didn't understand how critical this ecosystem was until my time at university. I'm trying to change that, so future generations of Rwandans will take climate care and environmental activism seriously from the start. When I was a little boy, I watched village women spend nearly six hours a day fetching firewood and water for our household needs. Sometimes I got to accompany my mother into the forest. That time amongst the trees are many of my happiest memories. It felt like coming home. During my studies, I came to understand my emotional tie to nature in a new light, as I examined the connections between inequalities faced by Indigenous women and the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness I had as a young boy is common. To redress this, I started a group with some friends to conduct informal environmental academies in primary and secondary schools, inspiring younger generations toward ecological stewardship. The young pupils taught us as much as we taught them, quickly connecting global environmental issues to local problems. Those classroom activities evolved into We Do Green, a youth-led registered organisation for sustainability education and climate action.

The climate crisis is the defining issue of our generation. We know that we need to take bold action, and the developing world is on the frontline. Yet 98% of rural uneducated women and youth are not aware of what climate change is - decreasing their ability to adapt to it. We Do Green works to improve environmental literacy within these underserved groups. By empowering women and leveraging the curiosity and excitement of youth, we impact entire communities in support of sustainable livelihoods.

90% of the Rwandan population depends on subsistence agriculture. Our country's attempts to rebuild after genocide are increasingly threatened by climate change, and these challenges have been exacerbated by COVID-19. But community-led reforestation provides an entry point for action. We know that people learn best by doing...so we get our hands dirty! Through the fun of tree-planting, we create opportunities for reconciliation, mitigate climate change, and enhance food security. Once someone has planted a tree, they feel a special connection to it, and take care of it for years to come. Co-planting across ethnic and economic divisions also ‘plants’ the seeds of positive relationships, as we celebrate our shared humanity and value our shared ecosystem.

We Do Green is framing and teaching climate change so that environmental literacy can contribute to good citizenship, community peacebuilding, and economic security.  Common approaches to economic development consider the environment as a resource to be exploited for growth and security. We Do Green is disrupting that narrative, working with our communities to learn that our ecosystems are already the best platform we have for peacebuilding, resilience, and development.

We Do Green’s community tree-planting offsets the equivalent of 36.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year - and the average Rwandan annually emits less than one-tenth of a ton of carbon dioxide. We are effectively mitigating our climate impact while investing in our communities.

The first rule in community organizing is to pay attention to the community’s actual needs, not your version of them. Our first step for impact, then, is the community needs consultation. This includes a scoping exercise and stakeholder consultation process, brainstorming with partner groups about our project design. We then provide logistics and content for a mutually agreed workshop, comprehensively training our audience around issues of environment protection, reconciliation, and climate change. Through this collaborative model, We Do Green has impacted over 6000 youth and 1000 climate-vulnerable communities.

During our hands-on sessions, ecological experts explain the links between reforestation, water, food, energy, livelihoods, and sustainable peace. Through these programs, Indigenous women and children have planted over 2500 “Unity and Reconciliation Trees” and “Trees of Hope”.

To monitor our own work and model best practice, we carry out seasonal evaluations to assess both the paradigm shift among our communities’ mindsets and the health of our trees.