Podcaster: Mike Simmons; Guest: Olayinka Fagbemiro
Title: Big Impact Astrononomy: Olayinka Fagbemiro (Nigeria)
Organization: Astronomy for Equity
Link : https://astro4equity.org/big-impact-astronomy-podcast/
Description:
How can astronomy change lives? #BigImpactAstronomy talks with Olayinka about bringing STEM education to underserved communities in Nigeria.
Big Impact Astronomy: Through the Telescope is a video podcast that highlights the remarkable work of astronomy enthusiasts worldwide. Hosted by Mike Simmons, this podcast showcases how astronomy is used to improve lives in schools, refugee camps, hospitals, and more. Each episode features dedicated volunteers who introduce STEM in developing countries, inspire girls to pursue science careers, and bring hope to communities in crisis. Join us as we explore the stories of these unsung heroes making a difference through the wonders of the cosmos.
Bio: Mike Simmons is the founder of Astronomy for Equity ( https://bmsis.org/astro4equity/ ). Others on the team, including people around the world in astronomy and space exploration, authors and philosophers, designers and artists and more will be added as the website is developed.
Mike founded Astronomers Without Borders in 2006 to unite astronomy and space enthusiasts around the world through their common interests. During the UN-declared International Year of Astronomy 2009, Mike led the effort to organize the Cornerstone Project 100 Hours of Astronomy in more than 100 countries, with an estimated one million people looking through outreach telescopes in one night.
Today’s sponsor: Big thanks to our Patreon supporters this month: Paul M. Sutter, Chris Nealen, Frank Frankovic, Frank Tippin, Jako Danar, Michael Freedman, Nik Whitehead, Rani Bush, Ron Diehl, Steven Emert, Brett Duane, Don Swartwout, Vladimir Bogdanov, Steven Kluth, Steve Nerlich, Phyllis Foster, Michael W, James K Wood, Katrina Ince, Cherry Wood.
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Transcript:
[Mike Simmons]
Welcome to Big Impact Astronomy, where we explore stories of how the stars are changing lives and connecting communities around the world. From stargazing under war-torn skies to bringing science education to isolated communities, we uncover the incredible impact of astronomy beyond the observatory. This episode of Big Impact Astronomy is brought to you by Primalucha Labs.
Primalucha Labs makes space exploration accessible for all and empowers communities worldwide through innovative educational astronomy solutions. Hello everyone, I’m Mike Simmons, I’m the founder of Astronomy for Equity and the host of this podcast, Big Impact Astronomy, where we talk about how people are using astronomy to have an impact on people’s lives and on communities. Today’s guest is someone who has had a big impact and continues to, someone I’ve known for quite a long time, Olayinka Fagbamiro in Nigeria has been involved in space science and technology for 17 years, I think a little more than that now actually.
She’s the Assistant Director at the International Cooperation and Linkages Department of the Nigerian Space Agency. She’s Founder and National Coordinator of Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria, an NGO levering astronomy education and addressing educational inequalities across Nigeria. There’s so much that she does.
She’s initiated several programs aimed at inspiring the next generation of African scientists and engineers, increasing access to STEM education in underserved communities, empowering youth through scholarships, mentorships, hands-on workshops, and especially doing this for young girls and children in internally displaced people’s camps, the refugee camps in the north of Nigeria. She participates in international space policy discussions with different organizations, always advocating for inclusivity in global space endeavors. Her leadership and commitment to her causes have garnered her numerous accolades, including the International Astronomical Federation Young Professional Award and being named one of Nigeria’s Top 100 Women in Tech.
She’s also a 2020 to 2021 Tech Women Fellow, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, and she recently became a Carmen Fellow for 2024, and so many other things. There are more than I can keep track of or talk about in the short time that we have. So Ola Inka, welcome to the podcast.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me. It’s really nice to see you again.
Always nice to see you. Thank you so much for having me today, and I’m very grateful for this opportunity to talk a little bit about what I’ve been up to and what we’ve been doing in Nigeria over the past few years.
[Mike Simmons]
You spend a lot of time traveling these days, too. You’ve been back and forth to the U.S., as well as other countries. You’re involved in international organizations quite a bit, and you’re in demand as a speaker and all kinds of things.
You’ve been very inspirational to especially a lot of young women. Are you able to stay involved in the things that you started in Nigeria with everything you’re doing internationally?
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
You know, the thing is, when you’re doing all of these things in Nigeria, and then people get to see them, and then they say, oh, come and talk about stuff, and then you just find yourself traveling all over the place. But the good thing is, when AWP Nigeria started, I think the idea started with a group of very enthusiastic and passionate young people, most of whom work with the Nigerian space agencies, like some of my colleagues and some other people who are not in the space sector, people who just had passion for astronomy, for STEM, and who came on board to say, oh, this is a really cool idea, you know, the idea of using astronomy as a tool to popularize STEM in Nigeria.
Yeah, so we had a bunch of people who are really very passionate about astronomy, about space science, about STEM in general in Nigeria. So yes, I have, so it’s a team. The AWP Nigeria is not only made up of me, I just coordinate the activities and all of that.
So yeah, so while I get to be away for a while, these days, you know, having all this engagement, I have a very solid team that is in charge of everything that we do in Nigeria. And so it’s really, I think for me, it’s a big deal if you have people who have the same level of passion that you have for something that started out to be your dream. So I think for some people, they say, oh, you, maybe you’re a really good leader or something, that you’re able to get people together who have this kind of passion and, you know, trying to, you know, make impact and all of that.
So yes, I would say, yeah, I think I’m very lucky to have the kind of team that I have, because over the years, we started together, and then the team has been expanding and growing. As you would know, Nigeria is quite a very big country in terms of landmass and all of that. So apparently, we had always run with a system where we have people in different parts of Nigeria who are what we call volunteers.
So we work, our work model is kind of fully based on voluntary system, where we just have people who want to give back to the society. We just have scientists who say, you know what, I love what you guys are doing, and I want to be a part of this, and I want to give back to the society as well. Yeah, so that’s whether one person, which could be myself or any other person is not available, it really doesn’t impact the activities of the organization, because we run on this model that has a lot of volunteers from different parts of Nigeria.
[Mike Simmons]
Well, that passion is the most powerful thing, always has been, and I’ve run volunteer organizations my whole life, really, and that’s makes things happen. So that’s fantastic, but you know, you share your passion with others, and that inspires them. When we first talked, I had just started Astronomers Without Borders, and you wrote and said, well, can I start a chapter?
And I said, yeah, go ahead and do that, because you know, I don’t worry like some do about the use of the name or the logo or something like that, unless there’s really a problem, and it was a small organization. You turned your group into something really amazing. I’m not involved over there anymore, but I don’t know if you have any connection with the parent organization at all anymore, but you’ve carried on the idea beyond what I ever expected, and now you’re one of the elders, not so elderly, but you know, you’re one with all the experience and so on that people can look up to.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah, that’s great. So really, I remember when we had that first meeting in Warsaw, I think, in 2013, I think about 2013, and so for me, the idea was, oh, there is Mike there who is behind the scene, like, sharing on and pushing and saying, you know what, you guys are doing great, you guys are doing well, you know, the support. I think without that support, AWB Nigeria wouldn’t be where it is today, because at the very beginning, at the initial stage, we had the kind of support that helped us to, you know, consolidate on everything that we have been doing as a group, you know, in the past, where we were just like, oh, a bunch of young people working at the space agency, or we want to go to a high school to talk to the young people, we want to mentor people, we want to inspire young people. But then we were just doing that just at presently and, you know, without any structure whatsoever.
And then we met and you said, oh, go ahead, when I asked if we could start AWB Nigeria, and that singular endorsement, I would say, kind of changed the whole story, because I remember getting back to Nigeria and then calling these people together to say, you know what, this is what we want to do now, we’re going to start Astronomers Without Borders in Nigeria, and we’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing and then try to expand and reach out to more people and, you know, and then you had a lot of, we had a lot of support from you, especially, I remember, I would tell people that when we started AWB Nigeria, we didn’t even have one single study scope, because we were just about creating awareness, we wanted to create awareness about astronomy, we wanted to use that as a tool to create awareness about STEM. And so we were just a group of people just talking to people about space, about astronomy, and then with the support came all the resources that we needed to start big, because I remember when we had the, there was data, we had the partial eclipse passing through Nigeria, and then you sent us thousands of solar glasses, that was a really big deal, because the government of Nigeria knew there was going to be this partial eclipse, everybody was, you know, preparing, okay, they needed solar glasses here and there, and then I came one day to the agency and said, you know what, we have this bunch of solar glasses from Mike Simmons from AWB, and that changed the whole, you know, arrangement, because we were going to think about how we’re going to make people to view, and they would not hold their eyes, how we’re going to make young people to who have been, who have been so excited about the news about, oh, there’s going to be partial eclipse, you know, along Nigeria and all of that.
And then now we had these resources to go around a bunch of schools and internally displaced people’s camps, we also went there with those glasses, and it was just something so great, and so looking back now, I think that support, that singular action from you, from AWB, really kick-started what is now what it is, you know, so it’s a beautiful story I like to tell, because when people say, how did you come about, how did you come up with AWB?
I’m like, no, AWB wasn’t my idea, I met with Mike, and then he said, okay, yeah, you can go ahead and do this in Nigeria, and that was exactly what we did, so it’s really a good one.
[Mike Simmons]
Yeah, yeah, well, that’s, it’s a great story, and it points out something, I’m not doing that AWB anymore, I’m doing an astronomy for equity, and focusing on how we can use astronomy, in particular, what I’ve learned over the years from you and others about how astronomy can be used to improve lives, and communities, and inspire people, and so on, and so that’s the focus, is exactly on things like this, but one of the things I learned, and that I don’t think most people don’t realize, is that sometimes it takes very little to really get something going, it takes a spark, you know, there’s the ambition, there’s the passion, there are the people there, and it’s very difficult in developing countries to see a path towards success when you don’t have role models, and so on, so part of my role, a big part of it really is doing nothing except saying, yeah, you can do it, and providing a little bit of support, I mean, we’re expanding on that now, we have over a million brand new solar eclipse glasses that we’re distributing as part of, not just for eclipses, but as part of an educational program, and I don’t think we have you involved in it yet, in Nigeria, but you’ll be hearing from me, because you have the reach already, and so these little things can make a really big difference, that’s what this podcast is about, is, you know, there are people doing this all over, I also sent you five telescopes, I think it was, and they were inexpensive, easy to get here, very expensive to get to Nigeria, but that’s something we can’t do anything about, and it makes a huge difference, so that’s become my role now in astronomy, for equity, supporting people in many countries across Africa, and elsewhere, just helping them to do what they want to do, and it doesn’t take a whole lot to do that. Let’s finish talking about us, and look at some results, things that we’re talking about here, and we are going to start with one of my favorite pictures ever.
One of the things about this is, this picture is universal, you see children, young people, having a really good time, really interested, really happy, and these are children in a refugee camp, internally displaced people in northern Nigeria, who have left their homes, their villages, under the worst of circumstances, with really a terrorist group, Boko Haram, coming in and kidnapping the girls, and things like that, but this look is universal, the skin color and the clothes are different, but here they are learning about astronomy, and I think our next one up, here is where they are, inside a shipping container, and they’re learning about astronomy in the STEM Center that you created there.
This is obviously, this is not a group of children, that would have access to schools, and STEM facilities, and any inspiration, but, and another picture from there, with a small telescope, and this is just the same everywhere, it’s just that some people are just left out, and don’t have access to this, so tell us about the IDP camps, there’s more than one.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah, so the IDP camp project is like, one of my most favorite, it’s arguably my most favorite project that we’ve done so far, and the good thing is, it’s a continuous thing, so I think our first encounter with kids in the IDP camp, happened when we got those solar glasses, during the partial eclipse in Nigeria, so we started like, distributing the glasses to schools around Nigeria, and then we thought, these guys also deserve to experience this, and these guys also deserve to have an idea what’s going on, and you know, they are kids, they will be excited, and so we took a bunch of solar glasses to them, and during the partial eclipse, we had some sort of engagement with them, and we saw the response, we saw their reactions, we saw how excited they were, and so we started thinking about them, okay, so we could actually do some, we could take our outreach program to these guys, and so at some point, we got some funding from the office, and so we went to these camps, we started with one camp, because Nigeria has a whole lot of camps like this, and like you rightly said, they are kids who have been displaced by insurgency in the northern part of Nigeria, who are now living in these camps that are called internally displaced people’s camps, so basically, they are refugee camps for people, except that these guys are citizens of Nigeria, so we started engaging with them, and the first project we had with them was very interesting, because by this time, we had the telescopes that you sent to us, we had some leftover solar glasses, and all that, and we started, you know, interacting with them, and we found out that they didn’t even have access to a lot of things, because they were in this camp, they didn’t have access to electricity, they didn’t have access to internet, and all of that, so our project was basically to create a, to build a solar-powered learning hub, what we call learning hub, and that’s the content, that thing you saw there, the idea was to equip that space, and put in computers, put in a small library, put in a mobile internet device, and a generating set, you know, for power, and then we were speaking with the leadership of the camp, and then we said, we want your kids to, you know, we want to talk to them about STEM, we want to talk to them about astronomy, and they’re like, okay, we haven’t had that kind of thing before, but then if the guys think it’s something they would like, we said, yeah, they would like it, because when we came here during the eclipse, we saw how excited they were, so we are very sure they would like this, and when we went for the event, when we started the program, it was so, so great, you know, the kids were very, okay, so I think I’m missing a little bit, so what, in the course of our interaction with them, we found out that these kids are mostly hungry, they don’t even have enough, they don’t have sufficient, you know, supplies and all that, and we thought about it, okay, we should give them some sort of provisions, and food, and we got them some t-shirts, some branded t-shirts, we got them some school bags, and because the whole idea was we wanted to use that program to get the kids to re-enroll back in school, because at that time, a lot of them were out of school, you know, they were out of school, even though in Nigeria, primary elementary education is literally free, so we needed to use that program to get them to re-enroll back in school, and it really was, we had that program, and the kids were so excited, we went with our telescopes, we had a major event, which was a day event, we started from the morning, you know, and then we did some solar gazing, and then it proceeded to the night time, where we use the telescope, and then, because we had this learning hub developed and built for them, we had to, like, continue to engage with them, you know, from time to time, we would go there, you know, check up on them, see how they are doing, see how the facilities that we left are, where they are using it, and all of that. Yeah, since the last time we’ve had a couple more projects with them, we are looking forward to, you know, having a lot more projects with these kids.
[Mike Simmons]
This sounds like a really expensive project, I mean, you’ve got to be spending tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this, right?
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
No, okay, so no, we don’t have that kind of resources, and that has really helped us, because we are a bunch of volunteers, nobody’s getting paid as far as salary or commissions or whatever, so every resource that we get go fully into getting these projects done, and that’s why I’m so excited for the kind of team that I have, because everyone sees this as an opportunity to give back, give back, you know, guys, you know, drive their cars, pay for their fuel, and all of that, nobody gets paid, and that means for as little as five thousand dollars or less, we are able to achieve so much, because we are not paying personnel from the resources, we just, like, focus on, okay, what’s the best we can do with this funding that we’ve got, and I think the two times that we’ve got funding from OAD to run the IDP projects, they’ve been, I can’t remember the exact figures right now, it’s a long time, but then we just needed to use the whole thing and, you know, just focus on what can we do, and because we also have some sort of very good relationship with a lot of different bodies and people and organizations, we also leverage on that, for example, at some point, we got in some psychologists, some therapists, and all of that to speak with the children, because we realized, you know, listening to their stories, we realized a lot of them had been traumatized, a lot of them had been going through a lot of things, some of them, in fact, the vast majority of them actually witnessed one or two of the parents being killed, so they were traumatized, young people who had left the communities they were used to growing up, so we realized beyond science, beyond education, beyond astronomy, beyond, you know, getting some sort of healing from what they had been through, and so when we partnered with the humanitarian department in the federal government, and they were able to, you know, support us by getting us some volunteers also to work with the team of professional therapists and psychologists that we brought on board for the project, so yeah, it’s really a good one that we had, and like you said, no, we don’t have those kind of resources, and that’s why we are able to, we don’t wait until we have very big and huge resources, with as little as a thousand and two thousand and three thousand dollars, we are able to, you know, do some things that are very significant, I would say, because with these kids, a little really goes a long way.
[Mike Simmons]
This is absolutely true, and with these volunteers, and you see the smiles on their faces too, the people on your team, because they’ve come a long way, they’ve done a lot of good work, they’re not getting paid for it, but they’re very happy to have done it, and this is really what drives things like this, people using astronomy that they’re passionate about to help people in their own country, in their own area, to improve things for everybody, and that’s also true here, STEM Camp for girls, where you use astronomy largely.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
We realize there is a very huge gender gap in STEM in Nigeria, I think that’s common with most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where you have a very small amount, you know, like the small number of girls who are interested in STEM. Part of what we set out to do was to bridge the gap, we wanted to close up that gap as much as we could, and so we’ve always had dedicated programs for girls, because we want girls to come into STEM, and part of what we do is we try to mentor young girls in high school, in elementary school, and one of the ways we do this is to get people like myself, people like my colleagues who have women in the space agency, and who are engineers in other sectors, and then we bring them together, and we visit these girls, and we bring these guys to talk at camps, for example, and be like, if these people who are women, they are girls, they were girls like you some years back, and now they’ve grown to be these women who are now engineers, who are scientists, who are lawyers, who are this and that, and so we try to inspire them and say, you know what, you can do this, if we can do this, then you also can do it, and I very much like that part of what I do, because even whether we have a program that is ongoing or not, there’s that young girl, there are these young girls somewhere who are looking up to you, who want to listen to you, these people think you are a role model to them, they want to be like you when they grow up, so they just want to listen to you, they want you to tell them about how you get to where you got to, how was the journey, and all of that. Yeah, so the mentoring, the program for girls is a major part of what we do at AWB Nigeria.
[Mike Simmons]
Yeah, and that inspiration, just like talking about when you started the organization in the first place, it doesn’t take much, does it? It takes very little to get things going, it needs a spark, a little bit of inspiration, you’re passing that on now to a whole generation and making a big difference, and those kids in the IDP camps too, it’s a good example of why I no longer say that Astronomy for Equity is helping underserved communities, I say unserved, because there’s lots of help for underserved, which could be inner city in the United States or in other countries where there isn’t very much, but they have connections to programs. There are things that might be available that just don’t have enough. Kids in the IDP camps, they have nothing, no prospects until you bring it to them.
So they’re unserved. So that’s the ones that I focus on here. And I think you told me once too that girls in Nigeria just don’t even realize that they can go into science if they want to.
It’s just otherwise not an option for them. Moving on to some others. Now let’s take a look here.
The schools in many African countries that I have seen the kids wear uniforms are all very different. They’re usually very colorful and it’s just delightful. And here are kids again with solar glasses.
Do you have any comment on these?
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah, so this is just one of the many schools that have been part of different programs that we’ve organized in the past. I think this particular picture was taken on the day of the partial eclipse that Nigeria experienced some years back. And the space agency, we had to collaborate with the space agency on this day.
The space agency had invited school kids to come around to the space agency and there are going to be solar glasses for you guys to use. And that was what happened here. Yeah, and like you rightly said, yes, most schools in Africa, in Nigeria, they have very colorful and distinct uniforms.
So for example, if you had a room with 10 different schools, you’re going to have 10 different beautiful uniforms, which kind of makes the whole thing very unique.
[Mike Simmons]
I really enjoy that. I think it’s great. And here we are, another school.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
This was last year. Yeah, this was last year. This was in Lagos and that was me at the back there.
This was an elementary school in Lagos and I had gone there to have some sort of astronomy outreach and STEM thing with them. And the kids, they were very little, but they had very wonderful and interesting questions. They wanted to know a lot of things about space.
They wanted to know if they could go to space. They wanted to be, you know, I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. And it was very interesting because, you know, it was very interesting that we had this program with this school because usually because a good number of us, at least myself and some of my team members, we are based in Abuja, which is in the north central part of Nigeria.
And so because of limited resources, most of the times if we have to organize events outside of Abuja, we would have to rely on volunteers who reside in those places because the cost of transporting a team of resource people who are volunteers from Abuja to all of these places could be very crazy. Every time we had to go to Lagos, you know, it’s a whole lot of resources that are required. So we had to like be very conscious about getting volunteers who reside in different parts of Nigeria.
So if we have anything there. So for this event, I had to fly to Lagos because I couldn’t even go with it with anybody from my team. But we totally relied on volunteers who are based in Lagos, you know, to have this program with these kids.
And this year, so last year we were two years ago. So we were in Lagos. I think this year we are looking to see how much of outside of Abuja programs we can have because I always hear that every time everybody say you haven’t been to my state.
Okay, so Nigeria has 36 states and there’s a further capacity. So everybody say you haven’t come to our state to have an event. We are looking forward to when you guys are going to come and all of that.
And as much as I let them understand resources are what we don’t have. We don’t have enough resources to, you know, have this program. We are looking forward to being able to do at least much better than we did in the past years where we are able to like go to these different parts of Nigeria.
[Mike Simmons]
I have these things a little out of order, but I think this is the school that I showed before. And I love the names, Great Talent Star Academy. I mean, that’s pretty much.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah, this is a school in Abuja. And this school has been very active, you know, when it comes to space and STEM and all those programs. Every time we have a program, they are going to, you know, when we invite them to attend programs, they’re always there.
And so one of those days they’re like, oh, we would love for your team to visit our school and talk to our kids. And that way, because sometimes if you want, if you have an event in a central place and you invite schools and say, you know what, come to these places or come to this particular place, because the cost of transportation in Nigeria is pretty high. And so a school might not be able to take more than 10 kids to a program that is being organized.
But when we go to their school, we’re literally able to talk to all of this population in that school. Sometimes it could be as many as a thousand.
[Speaker 3]
Yeah.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Some schools, you know, some public schools that they have that many puppies, you know, it could be 500, it could be 200, you know. So going to the schools, we found that it’s more impactful than inviting schools to come to a central place where we organize events.
[Mike Simmons]
And I think we’ve talked before about the fact that you need transportation in order to keep going to these places too. It’s a little beyond our capabilities probably right now, but because we’re looking for funding to be able to continue to do all the things that we’re doing as well. But maybe in the future, we’ll be able to help raise the funds for you to get that.
One of the other things now, we got a lot of pictures of IDP camps and kids with glasses. I mean, the glasses are a great thing. You use these a lot.
Most people never looked at the sun and it’s really kind of amazing. For me, it’s been really eye-opening that it’s such a big deal for people to be able to look at the sun. But you know, it’s there all the time, but nobody ever looks at it.
It’s not comfortable to do that. So it’s kind of literally an eye-opener.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah. And you know, when we started this, so after the partial eclipse that we used a lot of the solar glasses, and then we thought, okay, so since we can use this to just look at the sun, and then the first school, the first set of young people that we had that week, we saw that they were so excited. Like nobody looks at the sun because you can’t even look at it.
You can’t attempt to do that without the glasses. But now they had these glasses and then they looked and everybody said, oh my God, it looks like an egg yolk. You know, a lot of expressions that were very positive.
And we thought, okay, so now we could, you know, make the solar glasses part of our daytime event, you know, daytime activities where everybody come out of the classrooms or come out of the hall and just look up and tell us what you see. And then we started conversation from there. We started discussion on that and it’s just something that is very, very exciting for me.
I think the solar glasses were like a major resource that we’ve used to popularize astronomy in Nigeria. And it’s been so exciting. And the fact that it can be reused, also, you know, we told them how to undo them with care and how to reduce.
And, you know, it’s something that I find, it’s one resource that I find extremely important and very useful in our outreach program.
[Mike Simmons]
And, you know, what we’re doing with these million glasses, and I probably get more, is going beyond that because that’s the first experience and you show them how to save them and keep them safe and reuse them. But the questions that come up and the things you’re talking about, that’s what comes next. And you can’t be there for that all the time.
That’s where we’re creating more resources with lessons and so on that anybody can do. What is the sun? Okay, it’s a star.
What’s it made of? How does it compare to other stars? The sunlight that we’re looking at, it’s falling all around us.
That’s the source of our energy of all kinds. And all the energy we use for fossil fuels and most other things, except for some renewables, is the sunlight turned into energy by plants that get eaten by animals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so there’s a lot of learning capability behind it.
And that’s what we’re doing. But you do that anyway. It’s just you can’t sustain it that way.
But when we get you into this program, when we get funds for this, it’s the free resources. You guys are volunteering. So it costs nothing.
I mean, I figured we can reach millions of kids for probably 10 cents per kid, per year, and inspire these questions and curiosity. And you know, and you probably heard from kids by now that you have inspired who have said, yeah, your visit to my school changed my life. I decided I’m going to go into science or something.
You’ve had that experience.
[Speaker 3]
Oh, no, that’s…
[Mike Simmons]
Yeah. And that’s the most amazing thing too, that when you do that, that you are actually changing lives and it works, doesn’t it?
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah. I’ve heard people ask me, so if you guys don’t get paid for these things you do, if you are volunteers and you guys are using your personal resources, because we had to do that. Say for example, we have a little grant, say $500, and then I call the team together.
I’m like, this is how much we have. But I’m sure we can do something with this. And everybody’s saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can do something.
And people get to use their resources, their personal resources to augment whatever we have to make things happen. Nobody asks for food, nobody asks for… It’s something that really gets me very emotional when I talk about it.
How people can come together and say, you know what? We just want to affect these people. We just want to empower these people.
And when someone asks me, so what keeps you guys going? And I said to the person, I said, have you ever been in a place and then randomly you run into a young child who maybe you had an encounter with say two, three years back, and this child comes to you and says something like, oh, thank you so much when you visited my school, or when I saw you set up stuff at the mall, because we do that. We do roadside astronomy, where we go to public places, shopping mall, on the street, and we set up our telescopes.
And we just let people come to view. A lot of Nigerians have not seen through a telescope. And so every time we have the opportunity to do that, it’s always very exciting.
And then this child says, when I saw what you guys were doing, when I asked you this question, when I heard you say things, I decided right there that I was going to be a scientist or that I was going, you know, that’s the best feeling in the world. Like you, you are looking at yourself and you feel like I haven’t done anything, but then you see one life there, two, three, four, 10, 50, 100. It’s, I don’t know how to explain it.
The feeling is more than what any money can, any payment will do for you, because now you’re looking at a young person and then you’re thinking, so I am part of this person’s story. And so let’s say 20 years from now, 30 years from now, they are doctors, they are professors, they’re engineers, whatever they are. And somebody asks them how they got there.
And they remember they had an encounter with somebody. I think it’s part of what keeps all of us going. You know, that thing is, it foils the passion, it foils the commitment, it foils the hard work that comes with getting a lot of these things done, because really we shouldn’t, even with the kind of resources that we don’t have or the little that we have, we shouldn’t have been able to do like a tenth of what we are doing.
But then when you think about all of these things, when you see, I tell you a story. So there was this time when we had the first encounter with one of the IDP camps that we had been during the solar eclipse. And then we took some pictures, we took just random pictures of kids at the camp.
And then I think eight years, no, no, no, maybe like five, three, five years later was when we had this solar powered project with them. And we usually, when we have that kind of project, we have banners, we display, you know, just for publicity and all of that. And when we were, when my team, when we were coming up with that project and, you know, all the things we needed, we said, oh, we needed to put a picture on the banner so that to at least let them know that we had been there before and stuff like that.
And so we just pick one of those random pictures. And the day we were setting up in preparation for the main event, we were putting up the banner somewhere in the public place. And the girl came around who was now about eight years.
And then she went and called the other people and she was pointing at the banner, look at me there, look at me there. She was wearing, so apparently she was one of those in the picture from five years back where she was wearing solar glasses to look at the eclipse of the sun. And now she’s grown.
Now she’s, she’s like eight, 10. And I’m like, oh my God, like it was really very inspiring for me. That moment where a child went back to railroad in school, just because she had an encounter with some random people who says, yo, we want to talk to you about astronomy.
We want to teach you about that. It’s really something that I find extremely rewarding. And I really want to do that more and more.
[Mike Simmons]
Yeah. And that’s what keeps you doing it. And that honestly is what keeps me doing what I do because of people like you, you’re the inspiration for what I do and why I keep doing it.
You mentioned also the, the child that 20 or 30 years later might turn out to be a scientist or an engineer doing great things because of what you did. And you know, they’re going to be going back to schools to do the same thing for the other ones there. So this is the, is a real legacy and it’s, it’s, it’s going to continue.
This is so important that this is why we do what we do. And this is why we want to tell your story and others as well. And let’s from the solar glasses, we talked a lot about that, but you mentioned telescopes.
So here you are, I think it’s another IDP camp, but here now.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah, this is another place. Yeah. This is another IDP camp.
And by this time we had some extra telescopes, you know, this, this particular telescope was from SSVI in Brussels. They had given us, I think they had given us three of this type of telescopes. And so, so the more we, the more telescopes we had, the more programs we were able to, to, to have.
And, and at some point we were also looking at living telescope permanently with some schools that had shown a lot of enthusiasm so that they could on their own, because there’s only so much schools we could visit or places we can go. So we are happy when we have schools, for example, say stuff like, oh, we will start a space club in our school and we would use the telescope if we leave them with us and all of that. Yeah.
So we really, we do a lot of, of that and, and all thanks to you, all thanks to SSVI. We went from not having any telescopes at all to having a couple of telescopes that we were so proud of. And recently we, we talked about the, we had given some of this telescope to some of these places and say, you know what, just keep this permanently here so that every time you, you can, you don’t have to call us to say, oh, can you, when, when, when young people want to do this, you know?
And so now we are, we’re also in the process of looking to get some more telescopes so that we can like give them to schools and let it be something that they would have, even when we are not able to come back there. Because sometimes we go to so many schools that going back for follow-up is always very difficult sometimes. So that’s why we work with the teachers.
We work with STEM teachers. We, we do a lot of STEM trainees for STEM teachers, because we want to use the trainee, the trainers kind of model where we are able to train these teachers who in turn train and talk to and teach their, their puppies. And, you know, so that way we have this cascade kind of effect where everybody’s learning, everyone is, you know, and it continues like that.
[Mike Simmons]
It’s fabulous. And Olenka, you’ve been doing such great things for so long. For me, it’s an example of what you were talking about.
I talk to a lot of people, well, I want to do this. I want to do that. And I say, yeah, sure.
You can do that. And just say, give it a little bit of encouragement. And mostly, you know, they don’t really go into too much, but once in a while there’s somebody who just really grabs on and really does it.
And so I talked to people all over the world all the time to encourage them. You know, I use you as an example all the time. I meet young people who I call them diamond in the rough.
You know, you find a diamond on the ground and it’s, it’s not polished. It doesn’t look great, but you know what it could be. And it just takes some polishing and most of the world.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
That’s what you did with me.
[Mike Simmons]
Well, that’s, I told you to go get some polishing. You did it yourself really, but encouraging you to do it. That’s what I’m able to do.
And when you get polished, you shine in it. Most of the world doesn’t have access to the things like this or the ability to do these things. You were a diamond in the rough, but you know, it’s been quite a few years and I see how you polished up.
You’re, you’re a, you know, you’re a three carat diamond here. You’re a big one. So you are an inspiration really.
I think not just the people in Nigeria, the young girls and so many others, but for me and for others around the world. And then I’m so glad to be able to tell your story to allow you to be able to tell your story because it really is quite a journey that shows what can be done. That we don’t need to spend millions of dollars.
We just need to allow those with the ability, give them a chance. The half of the people in Nigeria are girls and women. They just need a chance.
And so you’re a perfect example of that. So you’ve always been a shining star to me.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Thank you so much, Mike. And really thank you because I just look back and I’m thinking, I don’t know, I wouldn’t have been able to do this without your support, without your encouragement, because I remember every step of the way you were there, you were, you were my biggest cheerleader. And every time we had something, I thought, oh, we could have been much bigger.
It could have been more, you know, could have been grander. It could have been. And then I, I send you pictures.
I send you videos. I say, oh, look what we’ve done. You were always like very encouraging.
And I’m like, okay, so we can do these small things multiple times instead of waiting until we are able to do this big thing. So I think the, the small things, the, the, the small project, like where what’s really accumulated in this, in this big success that we are looking at today, because it seemed then like it was an impossible task. Where are you going to get the funding?
Where are you going to get this and all of that? But then I thought about it. Look, when we do something small and then we show it to Mike, he’s like, oh, wow, this is very good.
You guys are doing great. This is encouraging. And every time I show your, your email to my, to my team, we, we, we’ve been on virtual meetings with them in the past because I needed them also to see that we have been appreciated.
People really think what we are doing is a good thing and it’s worthwhile and impactful. And every time we have those success stories about teachers that, you know, oh, after you guys came here, now every girl in this school wants to be in, in, in the sciences and all of that. And I’m like, guys, see, this is what we want.
This is the result we, we had in mind when we started out and see what, what is happening. So, yeah. So thank you so much for the role you played, the role you are still playing.
And I don’t think we can ever be able to tell how much impact you have made to not only AWB Nigeria, but to the young people in there, because by extension, you are impacting these people, you know, much more than we are doing because you are there behind the scene and then we’re able to do this thing. So, so by extension, you are impacting that child in that local community, in the Southern Nigeria, in the Northern Nigeria. And, and I think that’s something I want also to be like, you know, when I’m 60, when I’m 70, when I’m 80, I want to have been able to impact the world as much as you have done, because I see what you’re doing with astronomy for equity.
And then every time I’m seeing pictures from Pakistan, from this country, from Mozambique, from Hawaii, this is what it means to be a global influencer. Instead, you are, you are literally changing the narrative. You’re literally, you know, helping people to achieve what they wouldn’t have been able to achieve on their own.
And I think you deserve a lot of accolades for that. So thank you on behalf of every child that we have been able to impact in Nigeria and the ones that we are going to impact because we don’t stop. We can’t stop.
We keep going just like you, because you, you are a role model for us. We see what Mike is doing. Oh my God, I’m just 41.
I imagine how much longer I have to keep doing this because I’m looking at you and I’m like, yeah, you can keep doing this. And yeah, so I think that’s very interesting and quite worthy of commendation. Thank you so much.
[Mike Simmons]
Thank you, Olayinka. I’m honored and embarrassed. I do these things for the impact.
I do like being behind the scenes, but I appreciate that. And it’s what keeps me going. If I have the ability, you know, now that I’ve been doing things around the world, if I have the ability to do something, I can’t say no.
So, but I think you would have managed without me. It might’ve been somebody else.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
You know, a lot of people would do great things if only they’d got people to encourage them to do that. If you were not there, we wouldn’t even have started. We would have thought, we can’t do this.
We don’t have the resources. But here we are today with the little and almost nothing that we had, we were able to make this kind of impact just because you’re there behind the scenes saying, this is good. This is how to go.
You know, the encouragement keeps you going. And even when my team would face, we were faced with different kinds of challenges, I just thought about it. You can’t stop doing this thing.
What are you going to tell Mike? You can’t stop doing this thing. Mike is probably waiting to see the next pictures, the next interviews, the next videos.
So you just have to keep going. And I think that’s something you can’t really quantify in dollars and cents and you know, so.
[Mike Simmons]
Yeah, that’s more important than money, but you’re experiencing that now because you’re encouraging the younger people. So you’re getting to experience that yourself. So you will keep doing that as well.
And this is, I mean, that’s a great pitch for anybody who wants to donate to Astronomy for Equity. So we can keep encouraging, inspiring students around the world who otherwise have no role models, no inspiration and don’t see hope. So I’ll just put that in as a plug because you and others can do so much with so little.
And all we can do is, I no longer do outreach myself. I just try and support those everywhere else around the world who are doing it. And so we just want to keep doing that.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Yeah. Thank you so much for what you do. Thank you so, so much.
[Mike Simmons]
Thank you for joining us today and that inspiring talk. And I’m glad I’ve been thinking about doing this episode with you since I started the podcast. And these stories need to be told.
People need to understand how this is being done everywhere by people like you. And you are a role model for others. So thank you for your time, Malinka.
[Olayinka Fagbemiro]
Thank you for being the big role model yourself.
[Mike Simmons]
This has been another episode of Big Impact Astronomy. I’m your host, Mike Simmons. Jacob Sager is our technical producer.
Our audio engineer is Ali Pelfrey. Big Impact Astronomy is produced by Astronomy for Equity, bringing astronomy to unserved communities worldwide. This episode of Big Impact Astronomy was brought to you by Primalucha Labs.
Primalucha Labs makes space exploration accessible for all and empowers communities worldwide through innovative educational astronomy solutions. Learn more about Astronomy for Equity, including how you can support us at astro4equity.org.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post production by me, Richard Drumm, project management by Avivah Yamani, and hosting donated by libsyn.com. This content is released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Please share what you love but don’t sell what’s free.
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