Seven UCLA seniors – Qile Chen, Ogechi Hubert, Ava McCandless, Teti Omilana, Matthew Puls, Kristen Tam and Maddie Wiygul – traveled to an less typical destination for spring break 2023: a youth detention facility in Cameroon.
The trip was organized through the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s senior practicum, a yearlong project for students pursuing degrees in environmental science. The program pairs teams of students with organizations and companies to research and address real-world environmental problems.
Kevin Njabo, a UCLA conservation biologist and adjunct associate professor and the faculty advisor for the group that traveled to Cameroon, said the students brought hope to the people they worked with. “The students were the motivational factor bringing back people who've made mistakes and putting them on the right path for success in the future.”
Using money raised through UCLA Spark, a campus crowdfunding initiative, the students installed a drip irrigation system powered by solar panels that can supply water to crops during wet and dry seasons. They also planted crops to optimize soil nutrient use and built a nursery for seedlings.
This project is part of a larger initiative of the Congo Basin Institute — a partnership between UCLA and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture — and the 2023 program built from a similar student project in 2022.
Read more at UCLA Newsroom.
Image Source: Madeline Wiygul
