The SOFER Initiative has recently been honored with the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Resilience Award 2022 in Johannesburg, South Africa for its Fishing Net Gains (FNG) Project, a solution to the problem of marine debris in Nigeria and Cameroon.
The Fishing Net Gains Project carried out by SOFER Initiative is recognized globally to be an effective remediation strategy towards reducing Abandoned Lost or otherwise Discarded Fishing Gears. This was fully captured in the GloLitter Partnerships Project Report on good practices to prevent and reduce marine plastic litter from fishing activities.
Fisheries plays a very significant role in the world, aside from being a source of food, coastal and inland fishing serve as a major source of livelihood for a huge population of people especially in those in developing countries.
My story goes this way: two years before I directly got involved with SOFER Initiative, I had heard about the organization and the amazing work they were doing in some of the states in the Southern region of Nigeria.
SOFER Initiative qualifies for the semi finals of the Afri-Plastics Challenge after scaling pass the first stage of strand one.
The acronym WASH is best used to describe "water, sanitation and hygiene". WASH is a key public health matter within international development and is the focus of the first two targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6).
The contest which recorded tremendous success got over forty entries from contestants who made different kinds of items majorly from cast nets
In early 2020, just before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, SOFER Initiative emerged as one amongst the two winners of the inaugural Joanna Toole Ghost Gear Solutions Award.
The war against bad waste management can be won but that will only be when we reduce the waste we produce, creatively reuse the items we can, and make the rest available for recycling.
At the peak of the rainy season, heavy downpour is expected at least once a day. This means that most of the items that had not been properly disposed of will be washed into the open sewer system, causing severe social and health complications.
