Teen Wins $12,500 for Building Recycled Playground, Plans 3 More Parks

A teenager in Nigeria just won an international award for using recycled materials to transform a trash-dumping ground into a park with a playground, and she’s not stopping there.

On Wednesday, 17-year-old Amara Nwuneli was awarded $12,500 in the 2025 Earth Prize competition, which casts a worldwide net for teenagers working on projects for environmental sustainability. The program provides mentorship and support for teens like Nwuneli to further develop their ideas.

Nwuneli said she plans to use the prize money to build three more parks.

“I’m excited for the future,” she told Business Insider.

She wants to create more green spaces and shade in Lagos, a city of 17 million people where less than 3% of the land area is green, according to a 2023 analysis.

As cities get hotter across the planet, green space is critical. Trees and vegetation provide shade, which cools the ground, but they also help reflect sunlight away and release moisture. Unlike pavement, green spaces don’t absorb much heat, but they do absorb rainwater and help reduce flooding.

Parks and greenery are also good for human health. Studies suggest they can help cut pollution exposure, improve mood, and even reduce mortality.

Turning a dump into a playground

Nwuneli became concerned about the climate crisis after floods overwhelmed her home in 2020, displacing her family. She said her parents’ spice business was affected too, since the rains washed away crops.

As a self-described “theater kid,” she wanted to get the story out, so she started recording and sharing videos about the floods. She says her efforts raised 2 million Nigerian Naira (roughly $5,000 in 2020 dollars) to help rebuild two local schools.

That was the beginning of the youth NGO she founded, called Preserve Our Roots. They produced a documentary about the climate crisis in Africa in 2023, which you can watch on Youtube.

She said the reaction to her documentary made her want to help Nigerians connect more with the environment.

“People came to us and was like, but I don’t see it in my community. I don’t see nature,” Nwuneli said.

So the group decided to bring the nature home — starting with a small park that wouldn’t require a lengthy government approval process.

At a site in Ikota, Nigeria, Nwuneli worked with local artisans to procure reclaimed metal and wood, as well as tires that were laying around the area, to build a slide, swings, and climbing wall.

The area, which Nwuneli described as a slum, is flood-prone. Indeed, many of the surrounding houses are built on stilts, she said. So, with the help of donations and volunteers, Nwuneli’s NGO planted flood-resistant trees around the playground — among 300 trees she says they planted across the wider area.

They first homed in on this dump site in November. On March 1, they opened the park for schoolchildren.

“I remember when the children were like, ‘now something we can actually call beautiful.’ It kind of broke my heart,” Nwuneli said.

In her eyes, though, this is just a pilot park.

A Central Park for Lagos

With the Earth Prize funding, Nwuneli is planning three more parks. They won’t be playgrounds like the one that opened in March, she says, but multi-functional community hubs with gardens, greenhouses, and waste collection sites.

She’s aiming to convert a large landfill in Lagos, pending government approval. For the other two parks, she’s targeting the neighboring Nigerian states of Ogun and Oyo, which are also experiencing floods and droughts that will likely get worse as global temperatures rise.

“I’m not satisfied. I feel like every community needs this,” Nwuneli said.

Her ultimate dream, she added, is to have a Central Park in Lagos.

The Earth Prize chooses winners for seven world regions. Nwuneli is the winner for Africa. A public vote opens on Saturday to select a global winner.