The Green World Campaign (GWC) has just won a 2011 International Green Award for its
“Times Square Takeover” this past Earth Day. You might enjoy a short video of the stunning animations of trees that swirled across the jumbo screens inviting people to support global reforestation by tapping “Text TREE” on their phone. Next year: rock concerts!
It is one example of the GWC’s creative approach to invite everyone to help ReGreen the World. We believe making the world a better place should be “serious fun.” (Planting trees for people and planet for the generations to come–what could be cooler?) It’s a privilege to work with communities in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda, India, Mexico and the Philippines–proud, resourceful people making the world a better place for their children, and for us all.
In Kenya, hundreds of children are now enrolled Green World Schools program, where each school plants 1000 trees and students learn about ecology and global citizenship. We’re already in 20 schools (influencing 20,000 households). Now, with the official encouragement of the Kenya Ministry of Education, we plan to expand to 100 schools in 2012.
In other news, we are now co-managing Kenya’s 15,000-acre Rumuruti Forest in partnership with 5000 local farming families. We’ve been asked to help plant 2 million indigenous trees; build an elephant fence to reduce human conflict with these magnificent creatures; distribute low-carbon cookstoves; and develop non-timber forest products to help people make a tree-friendly living.
With your support, we can restore the environment while creating sustainable livelihoods for these struggling communities.Our goals are global: we would like to spread our model of holistic regeneration far and wide. We want to expand our existing programs and build more organizational capacity to further our practices of conservation, restoration, and sustainable community development.