The Nyayo Tea Zones Development Corporation (NTZDC) recently brought together students from various schools in different parts of Embu County to participate in tree planting and propagation of tree and tea seedlings’ nurseries.
This is in line with the corporation’s initiative to inspire sustainable forest and environmental conservation communities in addition to its major role in supporting education sector through provision of bursaries and infrastructure development in schools
Involvement of the young at all levels has seen pupils as well as students from colleges and secondary schools embrace love and appreciation for clean and conserved ecosystems.
Programs targeting the young, the corporation explained, were meant to not only inculcate skills for environment conservation and protection but also ensure the beneficiaries acquired the drive to utilize the same at home, school and community level.
With workers and forest-adjacent communities’ involvement in protection, conservation and rehabilitation of the ecologically fragile areas, the corporation has been keen to ensure that young students participate.
The learners participate in planting tea, indigenous trees, fuel wood plantations and other suitable tree crops on the buffer zones, indicates the corporation report.
The education forums have deeply entrenched environmental conservation, monitoring and rehabilitation among students and pupils eventually creating well-coordinated environmental awareness and protection troupes.
The youth today view the tea zones as part and parcel of the community project due to wide range of corporate responsibility rewards it hands over to the community especially through provision of bursaries to support students and college and secondary students as well as support to schools’ infrastructure.
The corporation noted that financial resources accessed by parents and guardians through salaries with an average of Ksh31 million being paid, hugely sustains a large number of families to cater for schools fees and family upkeep.
College students through paid internships appreciated the need for forest conservation but above all earn money which helps them sustain themselves and also meet part of their colleges’ fees and equipment expenses.
By Robert Nyagah
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