Online Academy Tunja, Colombia.

In January 2021, the Plant-for-the-Planet Online Academy was held in the city of Tunja, Colombia. This was developed through the articulation with the strategy: ‘family and upbringing with love’ of the Women’s Secretariat of the Mayor’s Office of Tunja. 

In 2020, a call for children environmental leaders was held in Tunja, for which different Climate Justice Ambassadors from America, Africa and Europe sent their invitation videos to be part of the Academy and start leading environmental actions that promote climate justice.

Children from different city sectors registered and began to participate in various tree plantings led by the Department of Education, complying with all biosafety protocols. Currently, the children continue to participate in environmental campaigns in the municipality actively.

In January, the training process of the Ambassador’s Academy began, for which three sessions were conducted by the Colombian Ambassadors Maria Cristina, Mateo and Sebastian. In the first session, the children learned about the history of temperature change, especially since the era of industrialisation; the consequences of the climate crisis, the sources of CO2; the tipping points that accelerate the climate crisis; the impact of the melting of the Arctic; chronological studies of the time remaining before reaching the average temperature limit; the mission of the Climate Justice Ambassadors in the world; and the importance of the mission to reduce and capture CO2 emissions in the atmosphere through reforestation.

In the second training session, the children learned about the effects of reforestation on the atmosphere; the process of photosynthesis; the UN conference on climate change; the importance of countries adhering to the global treaty to reduce CO2 emissions to mitigate the rise in temperature as stipulated in the Paris agreement; the history of Plant-for-the-Planet, the inspiration of Wangari Maathai, Kenya’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who was Kenya’s first female teacher and also Deputy Minister of Environment; and how Plant-for-the-Planet linked up with the United Nations Environment Programme to achieve the mission of planting 1 billion trees worldwide. They also learnt about the global tree counting and location application; the global planting radar; the Stop talking. Start planting campaign; the reforestation  project in Yucatan, Mexico; and the mission to develop 10,000 similar projects worldwide.

The third session explained the global quantitative strategy to plant 1 billion trees by 2030; the number of trees that need to be planted per Academy and per family; the strategies for dissemination of the campaign with private sectors in the city; and the different training spaces provided by the German organisation each year were presented so that they can register through the official website.

This is how the integral training for children to become Climate Justice Ambassadors of the city of Tunja was developed, being the first generation of Ambassadors that will invite and train other children of the municipality to be environmental leaders and promote climate justice projects. With joy, we welcome the children of Tunja, Colombia, to the worldwide community of Global Climate Justice Ambassadors, currently numbering 91,000 Ambassadors in 75 countries around the world. 

We hope they will continue to be examples of environmental leadership in the country.
To see more picture of this event in Tunja, click here