Climate change: NGO takes tree planting campaign to students

By Stanley Onyekwere

To commemorate this year’s World Environment Day, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Purplehands Empowerment Initiative has taken tree planting campaign to students of Junior Secondary School, Kuchigoro community, in Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC), of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Also, the group launched an initiative mentorship strategy tagged: “Purple Hands Environmental Care

Club (PHECC)”, to help address environmental and climate challenges in the FCT.

Speaking at the event, Founder of the NGO, Dr. Brenda Max Nduaguibe, stressed the need to up inculcating environnental education into children and youth, as they constitute a large population that can influence the environmental behaviour of their parents and schools are the ideal and  convenient place to teach and equip them.

Nduaguibe explained that PHECC will encourage student/members to study their environment and to contribute to solving environmental problems.

According to her, “This Environmental Club would raise the environmental literacy and the children’s total

educational experience. PHECC will among other things assist our children and youth to understand the consequences of human activities on the earth and its resources, to understand decisions and actions that can be taken locally and globally to encourage sustainable living.

“Government agencies saddled with the responsibility to protect our environment should show more commitment in partnership  with initiatives such as this and other NGOs are encouraged to embrace and appreciate how vulnerable and threatened socioeconomic life has become.

“Therefore, it is crucial to create the awareness and understanding of individuals and citizens about the relationship between humans for the natural world”.

Also speaking, Director of FCT Department of Parks and Recreation, Hajya Riskatu Abdulazeez, described the intervention as a great important initiative by the NGO, in n partnership with the FCT Administration, because if the young ones are drilled on proper environmental knowledge and practices, it intends to be sustainable.

Abdulazeez, who performed the official inauguration of the Club, noted that it is going to go a long way in environmental sustainability for the present and future generations.

She adds: “When we inculcate the effort of planting trees to these children, and it will be with as they grow older, and they will in turn pass it on to the future generations”.

She therefore called the on all interested partners and NGOs that have been partnering with the Department to emulate the initiative by the Purple Hands, and ensure the replication of such clubs across schools in the Territory.

On his part, Nicholas Ukwuka, Vice President, Administration, Junior Secondary School, Kuchigoro, assured that the culture of tree planting is going to be sustained by the school.

“We are going doing our best to ensure that the environment becomes greener, as we will select students to monitor the trees planted in the school”, he stressed.