Help 60 Rwandan Students Fight Poverty with Trees

My name is Jean Baptiste, Chief Executive Officer of CAE, and we'll be sharing stories of progress from Nyagatare district in the coming months with a little help from our friends at WRI.

Thanks to you, tree nurseries have been built in all three schools! Our team germinated seeds under dry grass and shaded nurseries. Our tree guardians regularly water seeds with the help of students. Now we wait and watch the seedlings grow to a good height for planting in October.

We also had a project opening event to bring local leaders together, and we were honored by the support of the Executive Secretary of the Musenyi area within the district, as well as directors and teachers of the schools. The Executive Secretary announced, “we will do all possible to make sure that local communities conserve trees because [these actions] will protect against strong winds and other disasters.” 

I hope that working with everyone from top leaders to young students will boost the chances of achieving our goal. From all of us at CAE, thank you for your generosity and your commitment to students of Nyagatare district.

Sincerely,

Jean Baptiste + CAE team

Thanks to the generosity of everyone who has donated so far, we've raised almost $7,000. This is more than half the goal needed to educate 60 Rwandan students in restoring their local land through tree-planting. Here's what the students have been doing:

Environmental club members planted 200 grevillea trees across 3 schools on April 28, 2018 for Umaganda, a dedicated volunteering morning on the last Saturday of every month during which people from local villages volunteer their time on projects to benefit the community. The CAE team sponsored the event with support from local and national government officials, who helped to motivate students at the planting event.

Students also held an educational debate on approaches for planting trees. Class debates are often a chance for students to shine, to develop the logic behind their position, cite evidence from science books, and influence others to support them. This month’s debate was on whether seedlings would fare better planted 40 or 60 cm deep in the hot climate of Rwanda’s Eastern Province.

Elisa, CAE project manager, inspected existing nurseries and hopes to replace eucalyptus with grevillea, a better option for this landscape. Students from Kizirakome Primary School started preparing the nurseries for the planting season in November. At the Rubagabaga Secondary School, club members helped look after their nursery by weeding, maintaining the nursery structure and keeping track of seedlings with the support of teachers. Groupe Scolaire Musenyi Secondary School students continued to prepare the land for the nursery site, as well as a vegetable garden to supply food for school lunches.

Please consider helping the movement build further by sharing our project with your networks and on your social media.