Kids’ Clean Club pushes ahead with 50,000-trees campaign in Lagos

As part of efforts to boost tree planting in Lagos, Kids ’ Clean Club , a non – governmental organisation that aims to raise a generation of physically, mentally and environmentally clean children, has flagged off its 50,000-trees campaign in Ikeja as it seeks to spread it to all the five districts in the state.

The first flag off was done recently in Lagos Island, where 245 trees have so far been planted by the children in the Club, endorsed by the state government.

At the second flagoff over the weekend in Ikeja, Doyinsola Ogunye, initiator and state coordinator of the campaign and pioneer, Kids Clean Club, explained how they came about the initiative: “In 2009, children planted five trees but due to circumstances beyond our control, those five trees are going to be cut down. So we said to ourselves that instead of making this negative situation make us sad, why don’t we turn it into something positive and we said for each tree cut down, we would plant 10,000, and that is a total of 50,000 trees. And coincidentally, Lagos has five regions Ikorodu, Epe, Badagry, Ikeja and Lagos Island. We are actually going to these regions to plant trees.”

She continued: “I am doing this because I have passion for Nigeria, I have a passion for change and I also love children because children, apart from the fact that they are innocent, can easily accept change. They are proactive, and it is very important for us to channel that proactiveness in the right direction.”

People always ask me why trees and I say why not trees, Ogunye said, stressing that oxygen, which comes from trees, is essential to life.

“We flagged off today in Ikeja with one tree and now we are going to start activation in Ikeja. We intend to plant 50,000 trees in ten weeks and we have started. This is our second week. So we are saying that Ikeja should come out, Lagos should come out. We are actually not even lacking trees; we are lacking parents bringing out their children to plant trees. And we want everybody to partake in this and volunteer their time.”

 Ogunye said they needed support from Lagosians to achieve the target. “We have an active social media platform. We have people on radio, and so what we need is people listen to us on radio, on Twitter and go to the back of your house, plant a tree, send us an email or video and we add that tree to our 50,000 tree campaign. It is not possible for us to plant 50,000 trees ourselves, and so we are imploring everybody to come out and plant trees. You can have a 50th birthday and say I want to plant 50 trees, you give us a call and we add it to our data base that because of us you planted trees in Lagos state.

“We need funding. I would always say it is very difficult to mobilize 50,000 children in Lagos. We need support system. We need people that will come out and till the land. We need manpower. We also need gloves, watering cans, manure, sand and we need the trees as well,” she said.

The Club is partnering with 50 schools in the state including Langbasa Primary school, Higher Ground in the Lagos Island region, SOS in Isolo, Victory Progressive School in Ajegunle, said Ogunye, adding “We cannot overemphasise the support that we are getting even from the government because Lagos state government has endorsed us.”

FEMI ASU