Mwiri students plant more trees in regreening campaign

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 GREEN SCHOOLS PROJECTS 

The Wildlife and Environment Club of Busoga College Mwiri in Jinja city has 50 members who are implementing the Green Schools Initiative through a number of projects, including smart agriculture. 

Martha Masibo, a teacher and patroness of the club, says they have a nursery bed watered using plastic bottles collected from the school compound and other locations. 

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Every time they host big events at school, members of the club collect bottles, which they channel to this purpose. 

Masibo says the club has planted 500 trees so far. 

The club also runs a greenhouse in which they are growing various crops, including tomatoes, sukuma wiki (kale), onions and sweet pepper.

The purpose of this facility is to reduce on the cost of buying vegetables for the students. 

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Laston Brian Bakyainho, a member of the Wildlife and Environment Club, says using discarded plastic bottles collected from the school compound, they have so far made 20 dustbins. 

They also keep plastic bottles in a warehouse and companies dealing in recycling come and buy them. The money is used to run other activities of the club. 

Talik Ssemakula says that when schools were reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic, they found that most of the trees in the school forest had been cut down and the terrace was almost empty. 

This caused a big change in the weather conditions at the school. 

But with the support of the Busoga College Mwiri Old Students' Association, led by its president, Daniel Mushabe, they have since replanted trees around the hill. 

Ian Bakalinzaki says intruders did a big damage to the school forest that used to keep the environment cool. 

He says previously, they would get rainfall regularly but when the villagers reduced the forest to near depletion, the amount of rainfall reduced. 

According to Bakalinzaki, the monkeys that used to stay in the forest ran away and now stay most of the time on the school compound, entering dormitories, kitchen and staff quarters. 

He says they don't harass the monkeys because they are part of the wildlife.

But after their campaign to plant more trees, the monkeys are returning to their homes. 

Bakalinzaki says the club ensures that everyone at the school plants a tree over the weekends and club members plant more trees. 

S.2 student Benjamin Kazungu says that last term, the school invited high level delegates and old boys for the launch of a campaign to plant more trees around the school and in the school forest. 

Busoga College Mwiri was originally referred to as the Leopards because of its forest cover. The high degradation has forced them to embark on planting more trees. 

They have also been supported by institutions and in their regreening campaign, the club has vowed to plant one million trees both at the school and in the surrounding communities.

The club is also managing three fish ponds and keeps black flies for production of maggots to feed the two fish species they are rearing: catfish and tilapia. 

Aaron Opejo says the maggots help the fish to mature faster. 

Club president Mesach Cherop says the water from the fish pond is also reused for irrigating their plants because it contains nutrients. 

He says they grow their seedlings and vegetables in a greenhouse to protect them from the roaming monkeys. 

The club also keeps bees in four beehives. 

The reason behind the beekeeping project is that bees pollinate plants. The students are also working on another project to make candles from the beewax.

Cherop says that last term, they harvested four litres of honey. 

The school is also pleased managing to cut down on costs for fuel after upgrading to improved energy-saving stoves.

Busoga College Mwiri is part of the Green Schools Initiative, a project started in schools in 2023 to encourage young minds to act on climate change through adaptation or mitigation solutions.

The initiative is in its second year of implementation by Vision Group in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and is funded by the Embassy of Sweden in Uganda.

Debate and innovative projects around climate change are the two tracks of the initiative. 

Evaluation teams are visiting schools to assess the projects of participating schools in 10 regions around Uganda.

The best projects will see the schools behind them awarded at the national championship in Kampala this August.

The innovative solutions developed by participating schools aimed at mitigating or adapting to climate change must be realistic.