Initiative Update: Clean Lagos, Empower Lagos — Building Civic Stewardship

In collaboration with my fellow World Pulse member, @oh.nancie, I am advancing Clean Lagos, Empower Lagos, a citizen-led initiative focused on restoring civic responsibility, environmental order and dignity in public spaces across Lagos.

This collaboration brings together shared values around community care, grassroots action and women-led solutions to urban challenges. Our work recognizes that environmental degradation in cities like Lagos is not only an infrastructure problem, but a cultural one. When responsibility for public spaces is unclear, neglect becomes normalized. Our initiative seeks to reverse this by rebuilding ownership at the individual and community level.

What we are working on together

Through this collaboration, we are aligning our efforts to:

Mobilize individuals and small community clusters to take responsibility for their immediate environments (streets, drainage areas, shared spaces)

Promote simple, repeatable civic practices such as not littering, peer accountability and routine local cleanups

Use storytelling and documentation to make everyday civic action visible, valued, and replicable

Strengthen women’s leadership and participation in environmental stewardship at the grassroots level

We are currently documenting on-ground actions, community responses and lessons learned, with the aim of developing a simple, adaptable model that other World Pulse members and communities can adopt.

Use of collaborative funds (if awarded)

If selected for the collaborative award, the funds will support:

Basic cleanup tools and materials for community actions

Documentation and storytelling to share impact and lessons learned

Coordination and planning between collaborators to strengthen consistency and reach

Small-scale community engagements that encourage local participation and ownership

The funds will be used collaboratively to strengthen both our contributions to the shared goal of cleaner, safer, more dignified public spaces.

Early impact and learning

Even at this early stage, the initiative is sparking important conversations around responsibility, dignity, and collective action. We are seeing growing awareness that change does not begin with large institutions alone, but with individuals deciding to care for what they share.

What’s next

Over the coming months, we will continue to:

Expand community participation

Share regular updates on progress and challenges

Refine the model for replication beyond our immediate context

This collaboration reflects our belief that sustainable change happens when women work together across communities and geographies, sharing ownership of both the problem and the solution.

Together, we are choosing to act.

Together, we are restoring civic pride.

Together, we are proving that small, consistent actions can shift the culture of a city.

#StrongerTogether