Trees meet Aeroplanes………

Climate change and its effects has been making headline news in recent years. Of late different industries have acknowledged their contribution to ozone depletion due to pollution and have come up with various ways to mitigate the effects. It is against this background that Dream Alive Foundation, a civil aviation related NGO partnered with EBZ on afforestation efforts.

As an organisation we partnered with Dream Alive Foundation to take the message of trees and Civil Aviation Industry to Mutake Primary School. Dream Alive Foundation whose founder Tatenda Chigwada a pilot acknowledges that the industry produces pollutants into the atmosphere. The aviation industry releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere. The industry is lucrative but has got negative impacts that are far reaching hence a lot should be done to change and mitigate their impacts on the environment.

The event kicked off with a civil aviation ‘talk’ from Pilot Chigwada. The children were excited as it was the first time a Pilot had visited their school and interacted with them. He gave the students an overview of the civil aviation industry and the available jobs in the industry. Being a pilot or working in the aviation industry for rural students is a far-fetched dream and the experience made it easy for the children to have an understanding of the industry. The children managed to learn and understand what the aviation is all about, surely dreams were made alive.

Later with the help of students and Dream Alive Foundation personnel, we planted 110 trees around the school yards. As an organisation we aim to promote non-timber products in rural communities. We constantly seek ways to make communities’ benefit from trees without cutting them and this is evidenced by the choice of trees we plant in communities. Of the 110 trees 50% of them were fruit trees to meet students’ nutritional needs in future, 30% were apiculture trees, to promote bee keeping and the rest were ornamental trees to improve the aesthetics of the school. An additional 120 trees were given to students to plant at their respective homes. Our hope is that students share what they learnt at school with their respective communities and families.