Students asked to embrace tree planting
The Chief Executive of Strategic Communication Africa Ltd, Ms Esther Cobbah, has urged schoolchildren to embrace the habit of tree planting in and around their school compound and their communities to help protect the environment.
Ms Cobbah made the call at this year’s Mother Earth Day commemoration at the La Cluster of Schools on the theme: “Restore the Earth.”
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The commemoration was aimed at drawing attention to the threats of human activities to the earth and what could be done to make it more beneficial to humans.
Mother Earth Day, which was established by the United Nations in 2009, is commemorated globally on April 22 every year to promote harmony with nature and the earth.
Ms Cobbah, who is also the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Ghana Garden and Flower Movement and flower and garden enthusiast, said the earth had been designed by God as a place where new things grew.
She said human beings had the responsibility to take care of the earth so that it could also take care of them.
“It is our individual and collective responsibility to develop gardens in our surroundings, including public places such as school compounds. We must reject the indiscriminate cutting down of trees.
“It is our responsibility to ensure that we cultivate our private spaces as well,” she said.
The Director of the Department of Parks and Gardens, Rev. Charles Nii Ayitey Okine, said his outfit was committed to improving and taking care of the environment.
He said they had carried out landscaping of the frontage of the La Wireless Schools to inculcate in the pupils the essence of preserving the green vegetation and urged the pupils to sustain the efforts made.
The Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ms Shani Cooper Zubida, encouraged the pupils to cultivate the habit of preserving the environment to help address challenges of climate change.
She used the occasion to launch the Green Innovation Award which seeks to reward young people with innovative ideas on green living.
The award seeks to encourage young people to develop green enterprises to enter them in a competition.
The winner of the competition will get the opportunity to go on an all-expenses-paid visit to Israel where they have the opportunity to interact with businesses in their area of interest.
As part of the Mother Earth Day commemoration, Jerusalem Garden was established at the La Wireless Cluster of Schools, where a number of trees, including mango, coconut, guava, lemon and avocado were planted by dignitaries and pupils.