Apio Sarah Ongom: Turning the Tide

Apio Sarah Ongom heard about the JA Superfan Contest—launched by JA Worldwide to highlight the 2020 virtual Boston Marathon and associated fundraiser—during the summer of 2020 from her home in Kampala, Uganda, where she had been expanding her workout routine. Before the pandemic, Apio Sarah found that she would get busy and postpone her workouts, although she still managed to run twice a week and set aside some time for short yoga workouts at the end of each day. COVID-19, however, brought both restrictions and more time, and each contributed to Apio Sarah’s increased exercise routine. She lengthened her yoga workouts, ran longer and more often, and spent her early mornings and late afternoons walking to and from her apprenticeship, about 4 kilometers each way. She was no longer skipping workouts, so a contest that gave points for exercise was a perfect fit.

A business-administration student at Makerere University Business School, 24-year-old Apio Sarah first got to know JA in February 2020, when she heard about a campaign called “Tide Turners: Africa Beats Plastic,” organized by JA Africa and the United Nations Environment Programme. She liked and followed JA Africa’s Facebook page to learn more about plastics and their role in pollution, and then signed up to participate. “The whole campaign period was amazing,” Apio Sarah recalls, “and I emerged as the overall winner. (Also flip to pages 12 and 13 of the campaign report, below, to see her feature.) After that, I signed up for JA Africa’s newsletter and that’s how I learned about a bigger body called JA Worldwide. I later followed JA Worldwide on Facebook and Twitter and signed up for a monthly newsletter,” where she learned about her chance at being crowned JA’s Biggest Superfan.

Through the JA Africa Tide Turners campaign, Sarah learned skills that aren’t taught in a traditional classroom. She advocated on behalf of the environment, using her voice for a positive change and learning creative ideas for how to make money while recycling plastics. “I also got exposed to other meaningful ways of environmental protection,” she says, “which I believe will enable me to become an advocate for the environment at all levels. JA Africa allowed me to speak at the Online National Youth Summit Plastic Tide Turner’s Challenge 2020, organized by the United Nations Environment Programme in India (view below) in June. I am super proud to be part of JA.”