Planting Action at the Colegio Alemán Xochimilco

A report by Detlef Behnke, teacher at the Colegio Alemán “Alexander von Humboldt” in Xochimilco, Mexico City:

“Who plants trees, even though he knows he will never sit in its shadow, has at least begun to understand the meaning of life.” Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize winner)

On 1st September about 60 students and staff of the Colegio Alemán Xochimilco met to plant 34 trees: cedar trees and a variety of fruit trees. The trees were donated by the delegation of Xochimilco, Mexico City and the organizational manager of the project “Rocio Calderon”. Thank you very much!

With this action the children of our school are part of the international children’s movement Plant-for-the-Planet, which was founded in January 2007 on the initiative of Felix Finkbeiner. Since then more than 100,000 children from all over the world have become active in almost 200 countries. They are aiming to plant 1,000 billion trees by 2020 in order to reduce the CO2 in our atmospere as well as to offset the consequences of the climate crisis. Every tree absorbs 10 kg of carbon dioxide a year. This is a big challenge for the children of the world.

They also planted an Ahuehuete tree. It’s name comes from the indigenous language Nahuatl and indicates that it is one of longest-living trees in the world. All of the participants played a part in contributing to sustainability in harmony with nature.