NGO on a tree planting initiative

Green Hut Initiative, an organisation focusing on creating awareness on environmental issues, is looking to partner with other like-minded organisations in planting at least 3000 indigenous and exotic fruit trees at public institutions.

Ms Cinderella Ndlovu, the founder of the organisation said they have already sourced about 800 seedlings for the program. 

“A few months ago we engaged in this project of planting trees in schools and public institutions around Zimbabwe. It is a national project there is an organisation that is responsible for sourcing the trees for public institutions within a particular province. We are representing Bulawayo and we are really open to anyone and any other organisation that is willing to partner and contribute towards the project”.

“The initial target was 1000 but we changed to 3000 so we want to be able to rally in as many people as possible and we are going to be selecting schools based on factors such as water availability as well. The project is going to cover as many schools as possible and we have begun the process of propagating some of the trees such as avocados and other indigenous trees. 
“We have started propagating the seeds and we are currently on 800. Partners are welcome to donate as much as they can and they can even exceed the target of 3 000,” said Ndlovu.

She also said that the tree planting programme is meant to combat deforestation.

“The basis of the project is that we want to be able to bring greenery into schools and public institutions in the sense that we want to plant these fruit trees including both indigenous and exotic trees in schools.

We realized that even in an urban context such as Bulawayo there is a lot of deforestation that is going on for various reasons that include the the quest for firewood and  expansion of city boundaries to create new suburbs such as Cowdray Park and Mbundane,” she said.

Ndlovu added that the trees would also serve educational purposes.

We want to be able to spread awareness so that people can make informed decisions based on what they are facing as individual communities instead of a blanket approach. First of all, we are looking at how these trees are going to contribute to food security because of the fruits that they would be producing such as mangoes, avocadoes, peaches.

Secondly we are also looking at how planting these trees will also serve an educational purpose that is, if we are planting these trees in schools, children are going to get the opportunity to be able to take care of the trees and get a hands on experience with regards the importance of trees, their ecological value, how they play a crucial role as climate change combatants,” said Ndlovu.