By Dorcas Anaja
We bring you our first volunteer for the year from our ‘Volunteer Focus Series’! Through this series, we highlight the stories of individuals who have given themselves over to volunteering and giving back to their communities, based on causes they are most passionate about.
This month, we want you to meet Bilikis Ishola!
Bilikis Ishola is a lawyer, who strongly advocates for and volunteers with organizations working around sustainable business practices. As a lover of the environment, she devotes her time, energy and voice to cultures that sustain our environment and calls us all to climate action.
On taking care of the environment through volunteering, she says “I believe that since this is the only home we have, we have to love it properly and take care of it. It might feel insurmountable what we have to fix, maybe due to the lack of resources, labour or skill, but when various people passionate about bringing change to their community come together, they can achieve anything.”
Bilikis is a founding member and volunteer of GreenWithGrin; a non-profit organization in various states in the country including Kwara State, where she is the Assistant Team Lead. GreenWithGrin consists of environmentally conscious persons/volunteers who advocate for a sustainable environment and climate action. They educate members of their community on proper waste management and the need for the reduction in the use of plastic bags, bottles and encourage the recycling of reusable products.
She also volunteers with Minimalist Woman Nigeria, a non-profit organization which also advocates for the quality of human life, the earth and the importance of adopting a minimalist way of life.
On the joys of volunteering she shared with us that volunteering has given her the opportunity to work with grassroot members of her community to enlighten and educate them on the germane issues pertaining to the environment.
To close out and encourage volunteering, Bilikis shared with us a quote from Helen Keller which says: “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”
Inspired by this? Drop a comment on how you will be doing better in climate action or taking up causes to volunteer for!