Friends of the Earth Club
Photo Credit Malaika Media
Artist Credit Cornelia Carpenter
This month, the government in South Sudan, Uganda’s neighbouring country to the north, closed all schools due to extremely high temperatures that made it impossible for classes to be conducted. In Uganda, it got so hot a few weeks ago that classes in some parts of the country had to be conducted outside classrooms, under tree shades. Environmentalists have warned of similar extreme weather conditions throughout the year. This is an unfortunate reality and a mark of the change in weather patterns and Climate Change. Developing countries like Uganda are more likely to be adversely affected by the effects of climate change because they don't have the resources or systems necessary to cope.
Matilda from Mbazzi Secondary School (akin to American high school) in senior three, and one of AIA’s secondary scholarship students, is one of the members of her school’s environment club, Friends of the Environment. She is a light-hearted young girl who is often jolly and happy to see Action in Africa staff visit her at school. Her goal, together with other members of the club, is to protect the environment and build society’s ability to cope with the climate change emergency.
Friends of the Environment is a high school club created by Action in Africa students and other young people at Mbazzi High School. They organize and carry out various activities tailored to protect the environment and increase awareness about climate change and its impact on the community we live in. The members of the club are students aged 12-19 years.
One of the activities carried out by the club includes tree planting, with the support of their school. The Friends of the Environment have been given tree seedlings that they have planned around the school as part of the school’s improvement program. It’s a way of encouraging the students to ensure the protection of trees, which are important for ensuring a clean and unpolluted environment.
Photo Credit Malaika Media
Matilda also informed us that the club has taken the initiative to obtain litter bins which are distributed to every classroom, thereby encouraging proper waste disposal. Proper waste disposal is a fundamental behaviour change that environmentalists encourage to prevent environmental degradation and pollution of the soil and water.
Photo Credit Malaika Media
Many of the student leaders who are now members and founders of the Friends of the Environment Club have in the past been part of Action in Africa’s community clean up (Bulungi Bwansi) program. They mentioned that this has made them aware of the need to encourage their peers to be more cautious about how they treat the environment.
We are very proud of the initiative taken by our students to extend the community-friendly programs we have at the Centre in Nankuwadde to other communities, this is a demonstration of the sustainable impact that our scholarship program intends to have on the Ugandan community as a whole. Just like these young people, we all must be friends of the environment, there is only one blue dot, and we have a responsibility to this earth because it is all we have.
