We finally have a name! We were asked to come into our meeting today with a few ideas for our NGO name and we settled on "P.R.O.S.P.E.R." which stands for Programs for Sustainable Progress through Environmental Recovery. At this meeting we really wanted to have a set list of goals established. We all really wanted to do everything we could to help the Ogoni people so we had quite the range of goals in mind.
We had a lengthy conversation about wanting to be political advocates for the Ogoni people but ultimately agreed that we did not have the means necessary to do so. We also came across a few NGO's whose main agenda was political advocacy so we decided that our NGO would focus on more tangible goals such as water and soil cleanup.
- Cleaning the soil
- Greatest impact on a grassroots level, selecting communities most affected and helping them find alternate income, education on contamination, bioremediation techniques and preventing oil theft
- Teaching the Ogoni people their rights and empowering the Ogoni people
- Making our efforts sustainable, teaching locals bioremediation, Ogoni people need to have political advocacy so they are not exploited again by oil companies
- Focusing on clean water and teaching them how to clean up the oil
- Creating an international campaign to help the Ogoni people to prevent them from being exploited again, similar to other places that have had good results with protests
- Focus on cleaning of the oil and educating on what to do if a spill occurs again, this can help empower them
- Focus on education and work with another NGO to help secure their rights
We had a lengthy conversation about wanting to be political advocates for the Ogoni people but ultimately agreed that we did not have the means necessary to do so. We also came across a few NGO's whose main agenda was political advocacy so we decided that our NGO would focus on more tangible goals such as water and soil cleanup.