First Academy took place in Solukhumbhu, in the District of Mount Everest

Altogether 67 students from Shree Singhakali Secondary School registered for the Academy in Ramite, Solukhumbhu, in Nepal and showed up in the morning to register. After a brief welcome and an ice breaking session, the full attention of the children turned to the presentation “Now we children save the world!”, which was given by the two Climate Justice Ambassadors Sudeep Ghimire and Goutam Bhardwaj.

The presentation covered the most important topics related to the climate crisis: sources of CO2, global warming, photosynthesis, climate justice and the solutions that Plant-for-the-Planet offers to mitigate climate crisis. Of course, all of these topics were presented in a way that is well suitable for children. In the subsequent question and answer session, the children had the opportunity to eliminate any ambiguities they may still have had.

Following the presentation, the participants learned how to give presentations themselves and received basic public speaking tips. Afterwards, the students were given some slides from the opening presentation which they had seen at the start of the day and they tried to present it to their friends. They provided each other with tips on how to improve their presentations in the future and had a lot fun practicing. The children then headed to have lunch, where they were able to relax a little and discuss the topics covered so far.

After networking during the lunch break, the children were divided into three groups to learn about global distribution and justice in the so called “World Game”. The children distributed playing figures, candies, and balloons on the world maps laid out on the tables as symbols of the world’s population, wealth and CO2 emissions respectively. The children didn’t need to be told twice to distribute the balloons and sweets among the playing figures. Eventually, the CO2 emissions and wealth were distributed fairly – everyone has equal rights.

For their final module, the participants were divided into school groups and got to work on solutions to stop climate crisis. The ideas and solutions were presented in a clear manner: “What we want to do at our school; Who is responsible for which task and by when do we want to achieve our goals”. Therefore, every school group made their action plan to carry out with their pupils. After that, each school presented their action plans in front of the participants.

After a long, eventful, and enjoyable day, all the participants received their certificates from the school principal and Dharmendra Gotame from the Solu Hydropower Project, which recognized them officially as a Climate Justice Ambassador. An interesting day had come to an end. Apart from the experience and newly found knowledge, all new Ambassadors took with them a Certificate, and of course the Plant-for-the-Planet T-shirt they collected at the start of the day. And the teacher representative from the school was provided with Tree by Tree book of Plant-for-the-Planet. Teachers, friends, organizers and guests were very impressed by the performance of the children.

With the excitement of being Climate Justice Ambassadors and feeling energized, the children committed to plant trees in the backyard of their school along with the other students and teachers.

Do you or your child also wants to get engaged as a Climate Justice Ambassador for the Plant-for-the-Planet? Contact us here.