Achare Elvis Ayamba

With a master's degree in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Achare Elvis Ayamba is an Early career Ocean Professional (ECOP) and conservationist with over 05 years of experience in the fields of terrestrial, freshwater and marine conservation and sustainable development. He is the founder of Environment and Food Foundation (E2F), with mission to halt and reverse marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems degradation and build a future in which humans have the right mindset to live in harmony with nature.

Ayamba is a dedicated changemaker involved in; Bringing up new approaches to conservation that take into account IPLC rights, as well as critical youth perspectives on conservation of nature and biological diversity. Having an inclusive and equity space for all actors. Promoting an effective co management and equitable governance in protected and conserve areas.

He is committed to building a sustainable future for Cameroon and Africa where people and nature thrive, striving on a clear path to sustainable, low carbon, and resilient development.

Ayamba, oversees the programmes of Environment and Food Foundation (E2F) which include:

1)    Collection and valorization of marine plastics waste in Douala, Cameroon. 2)    Biodiversity conservation and restoration through communities participation in lake Ossa Wildlife Reserve, Cameroon. 3)    Participatory management and restoration of mangroves forests ecosystems in Douala-Edea national park, Cameroon. 4)    Collection and Valorization of abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gears (ALDFGs) along the coast of Cameroon. 5)    Girls and young women empowerment into environmental conservation.

Victor Ayegba Mathew

A community development and environmental educator, Victor Ayegba Mathew is an Environmentalist with 7 years of experience in promoting eco-friendly solutions and actions across schools in Nigeria. 

He has supported and volunteered for countless organisations related to water, environment, and nature education. He encourages sustainable interaction with the environment through proper waste management practices. While actively involved with other environmental firms in his country in paid and volunteering roles Victor has volunteered as a database organizer for Greenfaith, EarthCharter as a course co-facilitator, and also organized campus FaithsforClimate justice under the Greenfaith and partnered with the Swarovski WaterSchool Project to promote WASH projects across schools in Nigeria.  Currently, he teaches in Sahel Academy Kano state, Nigeria as an Environmental Educator.

He has bagged a degree in Environmental Science, a Post Graduate Diploma in disaster and risk management, a program with the University for Peace on systems thinking and Regenerative Leadership, and also a Leadership, Sustainability, and Ethics course with the EarthCharter. He recently bagged the Climate champion with the Climate Leadership Fellowship (Climate Smart Nigeria) and the United Nations Sustainable Development Network (Nigeria).  He's also one of the young persons trained and certified by the former United States Vice President Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader. 

Driven by the desire for an environmental sustainability-conscious and eco-literate world with individuals and institutions as its frontrunners, Victor is always looking to boost his skills in project design and systems thinking, behavioral change processes, community and educational engagement, corporate social responsibility/investment, social leadership, and people management to amplify the work he’s already doing in the environment space locally and globally.

Danson Matekwa

Danson is a vibrant, vocal, holistic and enthusiastic young sustainability professional, with an interest in youth involvement in the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Currently, he works for the Kenya Organisation for Environmental Education (KOEE), the national chapter of The Foundation for Environmental Organisation (FEE) in Kenya, in the department of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). 

In his free time, Danson is involved in poetry and storytelling. 

He has a bachelor's Degree in Geography and Natural Resource Management with IT from Maseno University and a certificate in Business and Sustainability from the European Business University.

Dmitriy Churin

Dmitriy Churin is an aspiring filmmaker and activist. His film portfolio includes both documentary and narrative short films. In 2020, his short documentary film about municipal waste problems in Montenegro won the national competition of Young Reporters for the Environment and was among the finalists of the international competition.

In 2021, Dmitriy became a Young European Ambassador (YEA) in Montenegro — a member of the non-political network of activists supported by the European Union to promote intercultural understanding and cooperation between the countries of the Western Balkans. Dmitriy's work as a YEA focuses on how film and art can make our societies more open, democratic, diverse, and ecologically sustainable.

In May 2022, Dmitriy graduated from the Knightsbridge School International Montenegro where he successfully completed the globally acclaimed International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IB DP) and served as the president of the Student Council during the 2021-2022 academic year.

Utsav Modi

Utsav Modi has been working as a Project officer at the Centre for Environment Education since January 2021. He completed His Master's degree in Environment Protection Engineering from Warsaw University, Poland in 2020. He is one of the content developers of the book "Gujarat ni Parampara" developed by the Climate change department, Government of Gujarat, and Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA). He is also a secretariat of the CEE Academy - an initiative for transformative learning for sustainable development. It offers various short and long-term courses / capacity-building workshops/ training on both online and offline modes. 

He is the Focal Point Person from the Centre for Environment Education for the Tide Turners challenge in the Gujarat region. Tide Turners challenge is a UNEP initiative programme, which gives a platform to youth in making societies and beaches plastic free. So far He had trained more than 2000 participants on various topics viz. Energy, Water, biodiversity, and Plastic. With his passion, he promotes 'Zero Energy Homes' and guides localities in getting Rooftop solar systems from Government Subsidy Programme.

Zakaria Almashaqba

With a master's degree in marine biology and have been working for the Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan scene a year ago, Mr. Al-Mashaqba developed his work experience by identifying the most important environmental standards necessary to achieve sustainability in environmental resources and preserve ecosystems, as he working for the Royal Marine Conservation Society (FEE programs National Operator in Jordan) this chance increased his knowledge about the importance of implementing the standards of the FEE programs and working to improve environmental practices, capacity and awareness. Mr. Al-Mashaqba believes that the critical environmental situation which ecosystems are going through can be remedied and fixed through joint efforts that seek primarily to improve interaction with these ecosystems through responsible eco practices.

Tomáš Driml

Tomas studied Landscape Engineering at Mendel University. In 2018-2020, he launched an online tool for precision agriculture on the Czech and Slovak markets. Since August 2022 he has been working as a Czech coordinator of the Eco-Schools program (at the national level). He likes nature and tries to improve the environment thanks to the fact that he leads some ecological workshops on a freelance basis. Therefore, he has experience in preparing workshops for schools, ecologically focused summer camps and other companies providing teacher education. He has written many articles discussing the environment so far. In addition, he created and implemented his own project "Collection of Herbs", which aims to promote local herbs to the general public.

Khandokar Farmina Shammi

Khandokar Farmina Shammi is Contributing to Probha Aurora as Assistant Manager of the Marketing Creative Initiative and Research department. Probha Aurora is a climate-sensitive youth focus social enterprise for environment protection and climate change solution. She has completed her bachelor’s degree from a reputed private university in Bangladesh with science background. Farmina has wonderful expertise with her educational background in public health nutrition and multidimensional skills with the creativity of presentation and digital marketing. She's always been a quick learner with sagacity. Fresh and full of life who loves to enjoy every challenge in her own way.  Farmina believes that if we want to change on large scale, changes should be started from inside of us; starting from a small scale deeply, it is important to change all the large scales. She is active and has the potential to make large changes. In a climate-vulnerable country like Bangladesh, Farmina can contribute to her academic and career background. She is a freestyle artist in every dimension of her expertise. She believes the YRE fellowship can enhance her skills and create opportunities for multidimensional developmental sectors.

Hamza Mansi

I am Hamza Mansi; I hold a BCs degree in Water & Environmental Engineering. I am interested in environmental conservation and sustainable development in Jordan and in the world. For this reason, I am working to promote environmental sustainability. Currently, I am a Technical Assistance with the Royal Marine conservation Society of Jordan in project On-Granting Provision Under the “Enhancing Women Participation in the Solid Waste Management Sector in Jordan”. In addition, I am a Coordinator for a sustainable program to organize and implement initiatives, projects, and activities related to the Eco-Schools Program, which is part of the sustainable development program, to ensure the sustainability of programs at the local, national, and international levels associated with the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE).

I worked in TADWEER Project in the northern part of Jordan, as a Coordinator under International Eco-Schools program focusing on waste theme to raise awareness amongst students about waste recycling and waste sorting in proper ways. The outcomes of the TADWEER project were reaching zero waste, and adopting better environmental behaviors', and maintaining a sustainable environment in the participating schools. I was incubated as entrepreneurship in a green incubation programme for start-ups in the field of sustainable water, sanitation, and resource, by cewas Middle East & INJAZ.  Besides, I am an alumnus of the youth leadership programme (YLP4) by UNDP "innovating for sustainable impact".

As a part of the GAIA fellowship my project is environmental education through theater, this theater focuses on the concept of zero cost initiative, such as the use of recycled materials in the theater as tools and equipment used, which reflects the importance of recycling. In addition, two types of theaters will be used, the shadow theater and the puppet theater. The type of the theater choice is depending on the students’ ages. For example, puppet theater is more suitable for primary school students aged six to eight years.

Bhargav Patel

Bhargav is a Software Engineer at Truminds Software System. He is associated with Truminds for more than a year. He works on cutting-edge machine-learning projects which include benchmarking computer vision models on different hardware such as mobile SoC and Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS). He also contributes to an in-house project which focuses on developing an AI-OPS platform. He is responsible for the development of a scalable ML pipeline. He has experience working with tools such as Tensorflow Extended, Airflow, Kubernetes, Kubeflow, Python, Tensorflow, PyTorch, ONNX, Caffee, Docker, Apache Kafka, TensorRT, JetPack, Android Studio Profiler, ARM Mobile Studio, AWS (SQS, S3, EC2, Secret Manager), OpenCV, GitLab, Boto3, and MongoDB. Prior to joining Truminds as a full-time software engineer, he worked as a Data Science intern, Teaching Assistant, and Undergraduate Researcher. As a researcher, he has been able to publish 3 research papers at various international conferences. Recently he published 3rd research paper on image compression as a solo author at International Conference on Machine Vision.

Apart from the tech world, He has a keen interest in contributing to solving the issue of climate change using technology. He has a strong belief that technology could be the key to mitigating climate change given it is used in the right direction. He co-founded the Environment Club at Ahmedabad University. A student body that focuses on climate awareness and taking action to inspire students to be sensitive toward their surroundings.

He possesses the engineering skills needed to productize a concept from building a team to prioritizing and leading the team to meet the end goal. He is equipped with soft skills such as leadership, entrepreneurial, positive and go-getter attitude, open-minded and quick learning, and dynamic, innovative, quick, and effective task execution.

Bhargav loves to know about technology. In his free time, he read about the latest technology trends and products. He is a foodie and has a soft corner for sweets.

Mahinoor Nazia Farah

Mahinoor Nazia Farah has been working as an Assistant Manager in Research and Special Initiatives in Probha Aurora which is a youth-focused social enterprise for environmental protection and climate change solutions. She has completed her graduation and post-graduation in Geography and Environment from the University of Dhaka.

From her academic qualification and personal knowledge she has acknowledged that environment is a very important aspect. For a country like Bangladesh this aspect is more important as Bangladesh is one of the most climate vulnerable regions. So that makes her feel she can contribute in this aspect. Both personally and organizationally she will work hard and do her best to protect environment and surroundings and make a significant contribution to tackling the adverse effects of climate change both in terms of adaptation and mitigation.

She believes that working with FEE will help her immensely to reach her personal and professional goals as well as create a positive and sustainable impact in environment friendly solution.