Five WCC fellows trace their climate work to home ground

Five WCC fellows trace their climate work to home ground

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Thu, 08/06/2026 - 09:50

Five young researchers joined the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2026: four through the Climate Curve Constellations Fellowship, a programme placing early-career researchers with organizations working on climate change, and one returning for a second internship in the WCC ’ s work on children ’ s rights. They came from Nigeria, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and the United States. Ask any of them why climate justice, and the answer starts somewhere specific. A farm, a marsh, an audit desk.

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In Eruwa, a farming town in Oyo State, southwest Nigeria, Toyosi Olatayo grew up the daughter of a Baptist pastor, attending services at the Oke-Oba Baptist Church, part of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. Her grandfather grew cassava and okra. She followed him to the farm as a teenager to harvest. Most of her congregation farmed, too.

She studied geography at the University of Ibadan. The question came from home. “ Why are people working so hard and still struggling?” She returned to Eruwa afterwards and worked alongside smallholder farmers, mostly women,…