The year 2025 is our year of forging ways of promoting restoration and living in dignity. Achieving these requires a lot of reflections on our interpretation of events around us, as well as our understanding of the important actions we must undertake. In line with these, the first quarter of 2025 has been, for us, a season of introspections and projections. Our events and activities all revolved around thematic focus for the year which builds on our work in previous years. We are on a journey, and we invite you
to join us as we go.
In February, we converged in Uganda for the in person meeting of the Omega Resilience Award Africa (ORA-A) fellows. The meeting involved engagement with communities, cultural events and exchange of ideas, all geared towards drawing wisdom, interrogating our realities and building a deeper understanding of the polycrisis engulfing the world.
During this first quarter, we have also had meetings on agroecology, where farmers
learned how to practise agriculture without resorting to harmful inputs and practices. One significant outcome of these agroecology meetings—making and using organic fertilizers and pest control methods—has been both liberating for the farmers who acknowledge that their new agroecological approaches have led to increased productivity. Rising from the training, the farmers have called for the government to ban genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and promote safe foods and agroecological practices in order to support the drive for food sovereignty.
Another highlight was the commencement of our Culture and Environment Days programme with sessions focusing on the presentation of books (prose), poetry/drama and movies. Books are one of the ways of connecting with our cultural history, and traditional values, and of learning how these record and drive responses
to environmental challenges.
Our Team Building retreat took place at a farm in Kuje, in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory. It was a moment or organisational temperature checks, training, inspiration, reflections and bonding. In this edition, we bring you snippets of how team members reacted to the farm/resort setting with its traditional village themes. It is not surprising that some related it to their grandmother’s huts while some found it to be a classic blend of traditional and modern living. The location was strategically chosen for team building because it gave us a canvas to explore our being, and our relationship with nature and our work in environmental protection.
As usual, we bring you reports of activities, events and stories that were of great
significance to our work in the first quarter of the year. We also highlight some books we
think you should grab and read.
It’s always a delight to hear and read from you. We never stop looking forward to receiving your feedback, stories, articles, poems, or photos. Continue to share with us at [email protected].
Until Victory!
Read and download the issue here.
