Tree planting at Rekopantse Primary School

My Career Corner, an NGO that supports schools to achieve quality education in Tshwane, extended their invitation to SAFCEI to join Rekopantse Primary School in Mabopane (in Tshwane) on 16th September, to plant trees as part of their environmental awareness campaign to celebrate Arbour month.

I was privileged enough to speak with the learners on the subject of Earth Keeping in their school and communities as the keynote speaker of the day. This event was designed in such a way that the leaners would share about their awareness of environment, the value of trees and their everyday life experiences of negative environmental impacts through songs, poetry and prayer.

We wrapped up the programme with a quiz, where two pupils received, as Earth Keeper champions of the school, our Earth Keeper t-shirts, and the overall winner obtained SAFCEI’s beautiful nature-inspired calendar. We closed the event by planting a tree, the main motivation of the day.

At least 20 representative groups from all school grades (i.e., 0-7) participated in this event and each group had one tree to plant. Moreover, SAFCEI brought six additional trees to plant (Wild Olive, Kree, and River Bushwillow), making a total of 26 indigenous trees.

I was very happy to observe that the learners’ basic knowledge on environmental education and climate change was astounding. I must commend all the educators’ effort in advancing the learners quality of education in this field.

Everywhere I go, the school learners never cease to impress me with their enthusiasm to plant trees and those from Rekopantse Primary School didn’t disappoint. We will be drafting a two to three-year plan with the school to promote sustainability around the trees that we’ve planted together and to establish how the school can apply environmental education to improve the environmental quality of the broader community.

This event was organized by the school in collaboration with SAFCEI, the City of Tshwane municipality and Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.