Schools to Plant 35 Million Trees, Ministries to Recognize Top Head Teachers

Schools to Plant 35 million Trees, Ministries to Recognize Top Head Teachers

More than 30,000 head teachers and their institutions can be recognized for leading tree planting efforts. The government has launched a push to have teachers and students plant 35 million trees per year.

With around 17 million students and 600,000 educators worldwide, the education industry is projected to produce 300 million seedlings per year. This program is part of the 15 billion National Tree Growing Program.

Cabinet Secretaries Soipan Tuya (Environment, Climate Change, and Forestry) and Ezekiel Machogu (Education) co-chaired Tuesday’s inter-ministerial collaboration meeting.

Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang remarked that the two ministries will strengthen their collaboration in tree planting by introducing an award scheme to recognize the best-performing educational institutions.

He said this at the start of the school tree-planting initiative. Additionally, the cooperation will provide the Ministry of Education with 15,000 kg of tree seeds to kick off the tree-planting effort.

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Machogu stated that they want to seek clearance from the National Treasury to allocate 5% of the Education Ministry’s budget to tree planting.

“We will utilize increased Constituency Development Fund and donor support, among other sources, to allocate at least 5 percent of the budget towards combating climate change and tree planting,” he told reporters.

The Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and Kenya Forestry Research Institute (Kefri) will give technical support to the ministry for seedling production and tree growth, including site-species matching.

President William Ruto launched the national tree-planting initiative last year in Makueni County. Tuya announced that the Jaza Miti Application documented the planting of 300 million tree seedlings across the country.

She continued, “We planted many more seedlings, but the low uptake of the Jaza Miti Application prevented us from recording them.” She also highlighted that the program helped to build 11 new seed centers for high-quality tree seeds.

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The CS stated that they had delivered 100 metric tons of seeds, which are projected to yield 2 billion seedlings.

Schools to Plant 35 million Trees, Ministries to Recognize Top Head Teachers

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