Maimouna Iro

WETA Hometown Hero July 2007. Maimouna Iro is a student at Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC who volunteers with the DC EnvironMentors program.

Watch online »

Maimouna Iro, an 18 year-old student who has conducted ambitious ecological research, is the focus of a month-long WETA Hometown Heroes profile airing in July on WETA TV 26.

Growing up in the Republic of Niger, Iro observed the relationship between the environment and public health while volunteering for three years with the HIV/AIDS prevention program Lahiya Matassa HIV/AIDS, which encourages locals to limit pollution and waste in their community. When her family settled in Southeast Washington, D.C., in September 2005, Iro wanted to explore similar environmental issues in the United States. She knew little about her new neighborhood and spoke little English, having emigrated from a French-speaking country, but Iro quickly found an opportunity to learn and get involved.

In December 2005, while attending Eastern Senior High School in Northeast D.C., Iro joined the DC EnvironMentors Program. EnvironMentors pairs environmental professionals from a variety of careers with local, often underprivileged high schoolers interested in environmental science. Students in the program conduct a year-long research project investigating environmental issues that affect their community.

Iro’s research on pollution in the Anacostia River earned her an Award for Excellence in Aquatic Research at the 2006 EnvironMentors Fair, as well as a position in the EnvironMentors’ competitive College Summit Program, which guides high school seniors through the college application process.

Steadily gaining confidence in speaking English, Iro also presented her research and facts about water pollution to the Montessori students of a neighboring elementary school. Her second EnvironMentors research project, on efficient forms of renewable energy, won this year’s Ronald M. Carvalho Memorial Scholarship for Environmental Policy.

Conducting and sharing ecological research is only one of Iro’s contributions to the community; she has also demonstrated leadership among her classmates. Following the advice of a teacher at Eastern, Iro helped create an EnvironMentors student film on the D.C. environment.

Iro became a leader in the production as interviewer, location scout, and other roles behind and in front of the camera. The film earned critical acclaim when it screened at the 2006 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital to a standing-room-only audience. Iro was one of two EnvironMentors students selected for the Moe Family Mountain Film Festival Scholarship for Environmental Filmmaking, which included a five-day, all-expense-paid trip to Colorado’s esteemed Telluride Mountain Film Festival. There, Iro watched environmental films and discussed her work with filmmakers.

Iro encourages her classmates to seek and take advantage of similar opportunities, including rigorous high school course loads and college searches. As a member of the National Honor Society and one of the Top 10 students graduating in her class this year, Iro won The Washington Post’s Award of Academic Achievement and 500 Club Scholarship, as well as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Natural Resource Education Scholarship. This fall, she joins the Class of 2011 at Michigan State University, where she plans to study environmental sciences and pre-medicine.

Go to website »