Bayer - Young Enviromental Envoy

Alumni Stories

Marvin Oluoch, Kenya, BYEE 2007

Marvin Oluoch participated in the Bayer Youth Environmental Program (BYEE) in 2007. His experiences during the field trip motivated and inspired him to strengthen his environmental commitment.

River clean-ups are part of Marvin's waste management project.

Marvin continues to be passionately active in environmental matters. He is currently working on several environmental projects and expanded his project on waste disposal management which he presented at the field trip in Leverkusen. “We have agreements with households to collect their waste weekly and afterwards we separate it and recycle it partially. In bigger intervals we also do river clean-ups,” says Marvin. Just recently, the twenty-one year old Kenyan was involved in the production of a documentary highlighting the environmental matters and threats. “I think that we can raise many people’s awareness for environmental issues through the media and art,” he says. At the moment, he is working on a movie about a major dumpsite in Nairobi in cooperation with an Italian film producer. “The burnt fumes that are emitted daily from the dumpsite not only put the people living in the surrounding area at a risk of catching chronic respiratory disease and deadly diseases, but also contribute to global warming and consequently to climate change,” said Marvin, describing the problems of the dumpsite.

“The field trip to Leverkusen in Germany was a great experience,” says Marvin enthusiastically. “There was so much to learn. Especially the trip to the waste management plant taught me a lot about handling wastes and sewage water treatment, which I could partly put into practice in my own project. Besides, the BYEE program united us young environmentalists from all over the world and therefore enabled effective networking, which is fundamental for implementing projects in order to ensure environmental sustainability - both locally and globally.”

Marvin recently attended this year’s conference of the “Africa Youth Environment Network” in Nairobi. UNEP organizes this conference annually as a part of the UNEP-Bayer Partnership to promote youth environmental initiatives in the region. Marvin met there with twenty other young environmentalists from all over Africa, to share his projects and discuss crucial environmental issues, such as climate change, global warming and pollution. Furthermore, they had a chance to meet and lobby on environmental action plans and talk about how to mobilize resources through fundraising as well as how to involve government and community in environmental protection.