Why target School going children?

I am just 27 years old and I have witnessed the total insurgency in our environment from the way we interact with it to the way we treat it.

May people have asked me one question: why school children?

To answer this, let me start by saying children who are exposed to natural world at an early age are more likely to appreciate nature when they grow up.

Children learn through imitation. The past couple of generations including the generation I grew up with were brought up believing that trees are supposed to be used, which is true. On rare occasions did people take time to explain to us what is going to happen when we deplete this very important resource and its relationship with nature; the only life supporting system available to mankind. The emerging uprisings have always talked of human rights. No one talks of human responsibilities.

Climate change is like HIV/AIDS. We all know it’s real but tend to ignore it. Everybody (I suppose this is 21^st century) knows that AIDS is real and anyone can get infected through irresponsible sexual behavior but people still act irresponsibly with their sexual affairs. With climate change, we know that ozone layer is being washed-out, weather patterns are becoming unpredictable and soon the ecosystem might not be able to support life because of our irresponsible use of natural resources but we still act irresponsibly in regard to our relationship with nature.

I personally grew up knowing that trees are supposed to be cut when we want to construct something. But one valuable thing I learnt from my grandparents (who raised me) is that trees are important. We need them for their medicinal, nutritional and aesthetic among other values. Sometimes with their little education I would hear them say something about trees and rain.

I don’t know if my grandparents thought that trees will always be there and won’t be exhausted because they hardly said that we should plant more trees to replace the ones we are cutting down.

We destroy nature by not connecting our children to nature. Chief Seattle once said, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”

Green Schools project is therefore designed to check this gap and flow of information in respect to environmental conservation. We want to attach each school going child with child with a tree. We want them to plant and grow trees with sense of ownership and pride and grow up appreciating trees knowing that we endanger our survival when we don’t care about our trees.

Kenfrey Kipchumba Katui

The writer; a Sociologist and Environmentalist is the founder and the Executive Director of Scope Intervention