Rhoda Bimnenui is a final-year midwifery student at the University of Buea, Cameroon, and an emerging voice at the intersection of maternal/child health and environmental advocacy. Her path into environmental work began in 2022, when she served as Vice President of her school’s Environmental Club, where she helped lead the school to first runner-up in an environmental competition organized by Green Cameroon in partnership with Towers of Strength.
As a midwifery student, Rhoda’s undergraduate research investigated the environmental determinants of health outcomes in the Buea Health District, surveying 215 pregnantwomen and finding that environmental factors were significant predictors of the health risks mothers and children face. This research became a turning point in her thinking: while she trained to care for mothers and newborns directly, her findings kept pointing to the environmental conditions: clean water, sanitation, drainage; that shape health outcomes long before a midwife is ever involved. That realization has driven her to pursue environmental work alongside her health training, rather than choosing between the two.
Today, Rhoda serves as Lead Volunteer at Nature’s Breath Cameroon and as Education and Outreach Manager at Earthlight Ambassadors, organizations focused on environmental protection and education. In these roles, she designs and delivers outreach programmes that build environmental awareness in her community, drawing on her belief that meaningful leadership means creating opportunities for others rather than seeking recognition for herself.
Rhoda brings to the World Ocean Day Youth Advisory Council a distinctive perspective grounded in the lived connection between environmental health and human health. Her work has consistently focused on translating scientific understanding and advocacy into tangible community action: from her earliest days organizing around environmental issues in secondary school to her current work managing outreach programmes and conducting health research. She is especially motivated by the ways ocean and environmental health intersect with the wellbeing of vulnerable populations, particularly mothers and children, and she is committed to bringing that lens to the Council’s work.
As a member of the Youth Advisory Council, Rhoda hopes to contribute a voice shaped by both frontline health experience and years of grassroots environmental organizing, while learning from a diverse, international community of young leaders equally committed to protecting the ocean and the communities that depend on it.