More and more kids in Bamenda, North West Region of Cameroon have refused to be passive victims to the increasing global climate change challenges in their communities. The special climate change education and action programme, EcoKids, which Voice of Nature (VoNat) and Meg Wah have organised in their communities since 2021, with the support of Erath Rising Foundation, has boosted their desire in finding solutions to reverse the adverse effects of climate change they experience daily.
The children are taking actions to rescue their communities and future generations from climate change challenges. 11-year-old Fonjoh Nathan is a young climate ambassador in the Northwest Region of Cameroon and one of the few kids in his commumity, who has come face to face with some of the adverse effects of climate change; landslide, water scarcity etc. He has identified some of the causes of climate change, which Include but not limited to deforestation.
After participating at the 2022 Ecokids programme organized by VoNat and Meg Wah, which enhanced his skills in tree nursery establishment, he has taken up the lead to rescue his community and generation ahead by establishing a personal nursery at home using plastic bottles, for planting at home and at new road Bamenda. “I derived my motivation to establish my own personal nursery at home from the Ecokids programme, after receiving powerful guidelines and techniques on how to go about establishing a tree nursery,” he said.
The youngster’s nursery is established in a comfortable and safe place around their home. Tree species here include sunflower, sour soup, pear, orange and plump. “Whenever I eat a fruit, I keep the seeds and also pick up and keep any plastic bottle I see littering around my neighborhood. This is what I have used to establish my nursery,” Nathan stated.
Nursery management is time consuming and requires more efforts to keep seedlings in good conditions. Passion, dedication and determination is needed to carry on with the exercise, especially when it is established in the dry season, when the seeds need a lot of water to grow. “I established my nursery in the dry season and it has not been easy for me. The seeds need water and I live in an area where we experience water crisis, so I go out of home to fetch water and using this water in watering the seeds is a huge sacrifice. I water it twice a day. There are days I forget and my parents remind me and sometimes help me water the seeds. I also remove stunted roots and grass round the tree to give space for the seeds to grow well,” he noted.
Being the youngest kid in his community to have a tree nursery established for climate change purposes, it is a motivation to many. The reactions of people around is a driving force for young Nathan to keep doing more and not relenting his efforts in serving his community. Nathan said: “I have become a motivation to many in my community and to my friends in school and back at home. I have answered a lot of questions and explained so many things about the relation of my tree nursery and the role it is going to play in the ecosystem. Some of my friends have started gathering plastics and searching for seeds to start up their own nurseries in their homes and this makes me very happy”. The kid has plans to establish a bigger nursery.
There are many kids like Nathan who have been taking part in the Ecokids programme with brilliant ideas they want to implement in their communities to contribute to the fight against climate change. There is need to guide and mentor them in implementing their ideas for the betterment of the environment and the fight against climate change.