The 13th UN SDG (Sustainable Development Goals), Climate Action, calls us to” Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact.”
As students of St. Marie Eugenie Girls Secondary School, we are very grateful to have the Environmental Club, under the guidance of our teachers, Srs. Cecilia and Sarah, Mr. Valence Ombella and Mr. Innocent Nzigama. We are a group of fifty members.
Every bright morning, we are marveled and blessed by the beauty of Kilimanjaro the highest snowcapped mountain in Africa. At the same time we are saddened by the diminishing snow on the mountain caused by the environmental destruction. This is caused by the human invasion of the natural resources like cutting of trees for fuel, overgrazing, careless throwing of cigarette butts which most of the time cause fire in the forests and harvesting of honey using fire. We are aware that God created our universe and “saw it was good”. Today, we hesitate to say it is good because we as human beings have done a lot of damage to the universe, “our common home”.
From 9th -18th July 2022, our country, Tanzania was blessed to host the 20th AMECEA (Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa) meeting with the theme, Environmental and Integral Development. We felt invited to respond to this call in every way possible by planting trees which highly contribute to improving our common home.
With this in mind our school has created an environmental club with the vision, Restored Environmental Beauty. We have agreed to do the following to keep green our school even in dry season;
We echo the words of Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ Interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan.
Our dream which is already taking shape in our school, will influence other students, schools, our families, our neighbourhood, all those who visit our school and all who hear the cry of our common home. We shall be agents of this project of restoring environmental beauty even at our homes during the holidays.
The time is now, for acting and committing ourselves to restore the environmental beauty because the earth, which is our common home, has provided all the inhabitants of the planet everything we need for our survival.
By St. Marie Eugenie Girls Secondary School Environmental Club - Chekereni