By the community of Nouakchott in Mauritania
In the Sahel, the region south of the Sahara Desert, the advancement of desert sands is threatening homes and farming fields.
A big Pan African Plan has been promoted to fight the desertification and residents all over the region are planting a “Great Green Wall” hoping to slow down the process. The project started in 2007 and all neighboring countries are engaged in this great challenge.
By 2024, around 30 million hectares had been restored, representing 30% of the target set. This large-scale project faces numerous challenges, such as a lack of funding and locust swarms, but also, and this has been the most worrying development in recent times, terrorist threats and a lack of political leadership.
To know more you can visit the Wikipedia link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(Africa)
In Mauritania our sisters have been planting trees for many years now, in collaboration with local associations and people from different religious backgrounds.
The latest project has been done with their Hassanya teacher, Khaled Hanevi who, having learnt that tree planting is one of their activities, approached them on behalf of the school his children attend.
Indeed, as chair of the school’s Parents’ Committee, Mr. Khaled Hanevi has been working tirelessly for the past three years to improve the lives of the children and teachers at the school. He has had a water supply installed, complete with a tap and a pressure regulator, and he asks parents to contribute to pay for someone to maintain the school. After all these efforts, he came up with the idea of improving the school’s environment and making it more attractive by planting trees.
We agreed to collaborate with this school on the condition that we could visit all the classes to raise awareness among the primary school children of the urgent need to act to save our Mother Earth. As this is a state school and the children study in Arabic, the activities were conducted in Hassanya. Thus, the 400 children at the school were given an hour of environmental education.
We have a beautiful country with stunning dunes and nature reserves, but our environment is also suffering due to rubbish, air and sea pollution, lack of rain, and rising sea levels…”
The children, each according to their age, actively participated in identifying the causes of the damage to the planet and, above all, in finding solutions to heal it once again. And, above all, to find ways to heal our Earth once again, even though it is already badly damaged.
When asked,
Who wants to become a Doctor of the Planet to heal it?’,
every hand went up and everyone pledged to put rubbish in the bin and not next to it, to refuse plastic bags at the market, and to take part in planting trees at school. The teachers from each class were present and helped explain all this to the children.
Then came the second stage of the operation. Our agronomist went to survey the site to see which types of trees would be most suitable, and then a team of men set to work digging 25 holes and filling them with manure.
Finally, on 6 April, with the help of the Year 6 children, the 25 trees were ceremoniously planted in the school playground. The agronomist reminded them of the many benefits of trees. Each tree was planted by a child. They were entrusted with watering and protecting them. The trees were named after the children. They were very proud of this!
May the trees grow quickly to provide shade for the children during break times, and may they remain living reminders of the commitments they have made to become ‘doctors’ for our planet!
To know more about the Hassanya language see this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassaniya_Arabic
