Amara Ifeji has a unique perspective on the outdoors and environmental education – and the importance of access to those arenas. She is a first-generation American, a Mainer, and remarkably accomplished at the age of 22. In high school, she started a community science club and sampled the Penobscot River watershed weekly. She is the director of policy for the Maine Environmental Education Association, co-chair of the Climate Education Advocacy Working Group for the Nature Based Education Consortium, the governor-appointed youth representative on the Maine Climate Council, and later this year will begin graduate studies in the UK as a Marshall Scholar.
I don’t think there was really any pivotal experience that got me interested in the outdoors. It was more a culmination of experiences. I was born in Nigeria. We left Nigeria when I was about 2 years old and lived in Maryland until I was 9, when we moved to Maine. In Maryland, I lived in a multigenerational household, which I think was the best thing. My grandfather had a very small plot of land in the backyard and he grew corn and different beans and bell peppers. I think it left me curious. Seeing his land ethic, in hindsight, is something that was awe inspiring for me as a small child. I think that was maybe the kindling of my appreciation and curiosity of the outdoors.
One would think that moving to Maine – the most rural, woodsy kind of state – would make it easier to access the outdoors. For me, I would say it actually made it more difficult. In Maryland, my aunt often took us to the park. But I didn’t have anybody to take me to the park in Maine. We moved to Maine so that my mom and dad could go to school. My dad graduated with his MBA, and my mom got a pharmacy degree. They were quite busy. My parents did not want us going outside on our own. They were very scared for our safety, as Black children, for us being able to just play like normal children without things happening.
There were also socioeconomic constraints. To be able to go outside and play outside in Maine in the winter, you need snow pants and boots. I did not have snow pants or boots. I’m not sure my parents – who had lived in Maryland and were from Nigeria, where it doesn’t snow – even knew that we needed those. I don’t think it was until I was in 7th or 8th grade that I had the opportunity to get snow pants. The environment as a hobby is really cost prohibitive. And there is also that psychological reckoning that a lot of Black folks and other people of color must do – the outdoors has not historically been a place of inclusion. It’s been a place that a lot of violence and harm has historically been perpetuated. I think the mix of all of those factors did not really allow for me to be able to explore my passion as early on as I wanted to.
At Bangor High School, I was in the STEM program, and the primary tenet was an individual research project. The summer before I chose my project, I went to a STEM inclusion training program that was focused on stormwater remediation, going out and testing the Penobscot River and building some knowledge around stormwater. At the same time, in the fall of my sophomore year, the media was focused on Flint, Michigan’s water crisis. I thought this might be a good project, utilizing sustainable practices to mitigate heavy metal and stormwater pollution.
At the same time that I was doing research, I was also doing community science. I had attended this training program, and I recognized how impactful it was for me. I wanted to bring this program to my school, so I organized a similar summer training institute at my high school. I really value having experiential education. To be able to provide that for other students who have traditionally been underserved – students of color, female-identifying students, students in alternative learning programs – was something that was really important to me. We ran that program for about a week during the summer, then we carried the club throughout the school year – the Stormwater Management and Research Team, or SMART. We went out each week to test the Penobscot River watershed, collected data, and completed research projects. We also spoke about our work at community engagement events. My mentor in high school is incredible and does a lot of community justice water work in Latin America and Central America, and she hosts a benefit each year. We had the opportunity to present our research there.
One part of my individual research was using plants and fungi to remove heavy metals from stormwater. I am a very communally oriented person. I really love building relationships and leveraging social infrastructure and meeting new people. And fungi are the same way. They talk to each other through these mycorrhizal associations – if one tree needs a little bit more phosphorous, these fungi can provide that through the network they’ve already built. Fungi are doing mutual aid work. They’re speaking to each other, doing community work. There’s so much we can learn from fungi.
When I was in high school, my parents got me a car, a little Ford Focus. I had been doing research. I had been going out into the Penobscot. I felt really comfortable, so one of my friends and I went to Lake Saint George State Park in Waldo County, about an hour from Bangor. As I was driving, I looked over and saw Confederate flags. This was the first time – I think I was about 16 years old – that I was very scared for my safety, for my well-being, while exploring my passion. I really wanted to turn back. I really wanted to not have to deal with that. Even before stepping into this communal space – a state park that’s supposed to be an access point for a lot of people – I already felt like I should not be there. That’s another thing that contributes to not really having these formative experiences in the outdoors. I did end up going to the park. That’s one of my favorite parks. It has a beautiful lake.
I’m very much still coming into my exploration of the environment. I love Maine. It’s such a unique landscape. We have mountains and beaches and forests, all in the same area. I try to go the beach after work every day during the summer, just to take a walk. In Bangor, I often went to Chick Hill. We would go to Acadia National Park two to three times each year. This summer I have a goal of visiting half of the state parks in Maine. I graduate May 5, and I’m supposed to leave for the UK in September, so I have four months to do this.
During high school, I connected to the organization that I currently work for, the Maine Environmental Education Association. The organization’s Changermakers program is uniquely modeled toward young folks who are trying to bridge their environmental passions with social advocacy. Of course, that really is what environmental education is – ensuring that those historically underrepresented in the environmental sector have the opportunities to be able to engage with the outdoors. My sophomore year, I attended the program’s annual gathering, fell in love with it, and I was on the planning team the next year. I still work at MEEA, now with a focus on systems change work, through policy and advocacy. It’s been a wonderful journey to thread all of these things together – from environmental education to community science to transformational policy – and trying to ensure that all youth in Maine and beyond have these opportunities.
I had a favorite teacher at Bangor High School, Mr. Ames, and he suggested I should apply to his alma mater, Northeastern University in Boston. And I kept telling him, “No, thank you.” This was a back and forth banter with us, and one day he convinced me to apply. I didn’t realize how much of a gem and how much of my unique interests Northeastern satisfies. With our co-op opportunity, I got to live and work in Portland for nine months and work with MEEA on this really awesome climate education bill in the state legislature, which was passed and is providing money for educators to incorporate climate education in schools. I also completed an internship in politics. I’ve incorporated environmental studies into philosophy, sociology, public policy, and urban affairs. I came in as an environmental engineering major, because I thought I was going to stay on the STEM route. But I will graduate in May with a bachelor of art in political science, with minors in philosophy and environmental studies.
I also serve on the Maine Climate Council as the governor-appointed youth representative. In that capacity I’m able to coordinate with scientists, other nonprofit leaders, tribal ambassadors, legislators, and so many other diverse folks to create a four-year climate action plan for Maine. It has been a wonderful experience to lend my youth, new Mainer, immigrant, and person of color perspectives. This is a four-year climate action plan for our state, and all people should be able to resonate with this plan.
When I’m looking at my passions and the things I’ve committed myself to, it’s not just the environment. It is also thinking about my identity as an immigrant. In Nigeria, the environmental and climate crises are really impacting folks, especially smallholder farmers – 70 percent of whom are women. My undergraduate thesis sits at the nexus of environmental justice, conflict, and gender studies. When I think about my future work, I think about what job would also allow me to sit at that nexus? I think that maybe it’s international human rights law. As we are thinking more about climate refugees, environmental refugees, folks that have been displaced because of environmental conflict – how can I use my unique talents and knowledge to be able to aid those individuals who are living in this globalized climate world? That is what I think I want to do, but that could change – I also thought I was going to be an engineer. Things come to people when we seize the opportunity, so I have openness to explore my future.
Until last year, I thought I was going to stay in the US and go to law school. I realized that I love my research. I love what I’m doing for my thesis, and I want to continue this. In the US, there are not a lot of research-based master’s programs within the discipline that I am focused on. So I decided to look across the pond, and lo and behold, Oxford is completely perfect, and there are so many people working on that specific nexus of conflict, gender, and environment. The environmental governance program, within the school of geography, is super interdisciplinary. I hope to do a one-year master’s program. In the second year, I have a little bit more flexibility. Right now I’m considering African studies.
I read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I was in eighth grade, and I was still very much coming into my culture and indigenous identity, and I knew when I came to college that I wanted to write about Biafra, because it’s not something that a lot of people know about – this country that existed for almost three years and the civil war that arose as a result of Biafran sovereignty. At the same time, I’m really rooted in Maine. I’m really rooted in environmental education in Maine. I had no idea how I was going to bridge all of these different insights and perspectives that I’ve cultivated over the course of these past four years of my undergrad work. My undergraduate thesis really came to me after a whole summer of reflecting, reading literature, and realizing that environmental injustice was a central tenet of the civil war. There was an economic blockade, and the environment was really weaponized against Biafra. There was mass starvation – about two million children starved. And food is central to environmental justice. Food justice and environmental justice are inextricable. I’m very excited and proud of the way I’ve been able to bridge these different disciplines. I’m really excited to continue that work in the UK during my graduate studies.
We as humans think that we are not nature. We think that we are different from nature. And that is just not true. Human beings are a part of nature, and it is not just the privileged few who should be able to fully explore their relationship to the natural world. Because everybody has a relationship to the natural world, whether we realize it or not. If people don’t want to explore, that should be their choice. But everyone should have the opportunity to decide if they like something or not – without society or another person telling them this is something they don’t have the privilege to explore. I think we all should feel empowered to explore our relationship with the outdoors – and that should happen as early as going outside and playing at recess and doing outdoor learning, environmental education, and grassroots environmental advocacy. It’s all connected.