This year, Green Lens International joined Oxfam International, African Climate Reality Project (ACRP), Caritas Uganda, and CIDI to celebrate World Earth Day 2022. Nelly Salvatore founder of Green Lens and a member of the African Climate Reality Project, joined these CSOs to participate in week-long activities in Isingiro District to celebrate World Earth Day.
This year's world earth day theme was "Invest in our Planet". Many activities lined up for the commemoration of this year's world earth day included media engagements, community dialogue, tree planting, school action, clean up, plastic audits, and a climate change drive. These week-long activities started from the 19th to the 22nd of April 2022 and were concluded with the commemoration of the big day, World Earth Day.
During this period, the local media was engaged to spread the message to a wider audience. Messages were sent out through local radios and televisions to create more awareness about climate change issues.
A radio talk show was held on Radio West and among the speakers were Simon Ddembe, Nelly Salvatore, Mwendo Denis Mugaba, from ACRP, and Rogers Najuna from the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development.
The community dialogue was held at Ruhingo Daily market and this attracted a good number of local traders, market vendors, residents, and local leaders including the Mayor and the Deputy Resident District Commissioner, Aine Christopher.
The community dialogue was very engaging and gave an opportunity for the local resident to ask questions about climate change and the possible ways it can be mitigated in their area. The community dialogue was activated by the climate change drive which was done using a truck with a PA system sending out awareness messages about climate change and inviting the residents to participate in the dialogue.
The community dialogue was then concluded with the cleaning up of plastics and plastic audit in Isingiro Town Council.
The week-long activities before the Earth day Celebrations were concluded with School Action that took place at Kabazana Primary School in Nakivale Refugee Settlement on 21st April 2022. The school action involved a debate among the pupils on the motion “Population increase is the main reason for environmental misuse”. This gave pupils an opportunity to learn more about the issue of climate change and actions that can be taken to mitigate it.
The school action was concluded with tree planting where 300 trees were planted in the school community. The pupils, members of CSOs, staff, and parents took part in the tree planting session.
The weeklong activities were then concluded with the celebration of earth day on 22nd April at Isingiro District headquarters. During the celebrations, the participants were engaged in a policy dialogue that involved the District leaders, local leaders, politicians, CSOs, and local residents who made several commitments to take action against climate change. Among the speakers was Jackson Muhindo Rukara, Resilience, and Climate Change Coordinator at OXFAM in Uganda, Hellen Kasujja the Deputy Executive Director of Community Integrated Development Initiative, CIDI, Betty Aguti, Policy and Advocacy analyst at Caritas Uganda, Emmanuel Bwengye, District Natural Resources Officer, Isingiro District among others.
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