Train Youth in Environmental Protection
To ensure sound management of our environment, it is imperative that tomorrow’s leaders be equipped today.
The KenGen Foundation Managing Trustee Mike Njeru plants a tree during the launch of the GIC Phase II tree planting competition.
We need to provide them with environmental education and mentor them to become the next generation of conservation leaders by involving them in forest conservation activities such as tree planting. Parents, teachers, guardians too play a key role in ingraining in them environmental conservation practices to ensure that the country builds a sustainable future.
In a bid to ensure school going children become environmental conservation champions, Bamburi Cement, KenGen Foundation and Better Globe Forestry rolled out an innovative environmental conservation project to steer the country to achieve its targets as outlined in the Medium Term Plan II under environment, water and sanitation pillars. Dubbed Green Initiative Challenge (GIC), the project aims to green schools and communities in Arid and semi-arid land areas. Working with schools around the Seven-Forks dams, the project aims at planting trees in approximately 460 acres in Machakos, Kitui and Embu counties within the next ten years.
Our school, St. Martin Kaewa Secondary School in Machakos County was among the 81 schools that participated in GlC’s first phase. We emerged the winner of the Challenge after recording the highest survival rate of multi-purpose Senna siamea (Muveshi) and Melia volkensii (Mukau) tree seedlings in our 0.5acre school plot. We now boast of an impressive small forest and woodlot that has changed our school’s environment.
