Plant Your Balance! Give us One Million Trees This Rotary Year
Rotarians in Uganda are planning to plant 1 million trees in the next three years in a bid to promote ecological balance and protect the environment.
This was revealed by District Governor Anne Nkutu as she launched the “Plant Your Balance” campaign, an initiative of Rotary Districts 9212, 9213, and 9214, which cover Kenya, Uganda, and Uganda and Tanzania respectively. This initiative is one of the activities to commemorate 100 years of Rotary in Africa.
The idea behind the “Plant Your Balance” campaign is for each Rotary Club to subtract the years of their existence from Rotary’s 100 years in Africa then multiply by a hundred. The result is the number of trees that each club will to plant in the next three years.
Uganda has 128 Rotary Clubs. The oldest club in the country, the Rotary Club of Kampala, was chartered in 1957. The average age of clubs in Uganda’s Rotary District 9213 is 19 years.
Rotary International is one of the largest service organisations in the world, and has invested heavily in providing clean water and sanitation, supporting education, preventing and treating disease, saving mothers and children, growing local economies, promoting peace, and protecting the environment.
To launch the “Plant Your Balance” campaign, 9213 District Governor Nkutu commissioned a tree nursery at Wanyange Girls Secondary School in Jinja.
The nursery will supply tree seedlings to schools and communities in Jinja and surrounding areas in order to facilitate the planting of trees around Lake Victoria and River Nile.
Rotary is committed to supporting activities that strengthen the conservation and protection of natural resources, advance ecological sustainability, and foster harmony between communities and the environment. The organisation empowers communities to access grants and other resources, embrace local solutions, and spur innovation in an effort to address the causes and reduce the effects of climate change and environmental degradation.
“Protecting the environment and Planet Earth is key to our continued existence,” Governor Nkutu said.
She said the nursery at Wanyange Girls would foster environmental stewardship among students and the community.
The nursery has been funded from money raised through the "Run for the Nile" drive held in March 2024 spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Kampala Central, Promote Uganda Limited and the Ministry of Water and Environment.
Rotary clubs have been encouraged to embrace partnerships and plant trees at schools, hospitals, Churches, Mosques, and communities all over Uganda. The “Plant Your Balance” initiative will focus on indigenous varieties and fruit trees that offer carbon credits.
After launching the tree nursery at Wanyage Girls, Governor Nkutu also commissioned the installation of plastic trap gates to channels leading into Lake Victoria. The goal of this project is to reduce plastic pollution of Lake Victoria and River Nile, from which a significant number of East Africans derive their livelihoods.
The trapped plastics will be collected by the youth and recycled into other products. It is hoped that this will promote skills development and employment for the youth in the schools and communities around Lake Victoria and River Nile.
Protecting water resources is one of the objectives of the Rotary’s environment programme.
About Rotary
Rotary unites a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges and creating lasting change. Rotary connects 1.4 million people of action from more than 46,000 Rotary clubs in almost every country in the world. Their service improves lives at both local and international levels. For more information, visit Rotary.org
About District 9213
District 9213 brings together a network of 4,708 Rotarians and 2,517 Rotaractors from 128 Rotary Clubs and 127 Rotaract Clubs.