World Environment Day 2011 - Celebrations

Sewalanka Foundation embraces “World Environment Day 2011” across the country.

Across the country this month a series of events, workshops and programmes were organised by Sewalanka Foundation in aid of World Environment Day 2011.

The celebrations saw participation from, students, community members, community based organisations, teachers, government officials and representatives from non-governmental organisations.

To celebrate this year’s theme “Forests: nature at your service” our team in Hambantota demonstrated tree planting techniques to community members, members then planted over 100 trees along Walawe river bank. Kumback and Mee were among the tree varieties planted and will eventually provide much needed shade and protect the river bank from erosion. Our team in Vavuniya also planted coconut seedlings in our farm (Thawasikulam).

In the district of Monaragala our community members were given plants and seeds and were shown best practices, hints and tips on how to optimise the use of small growing spaces to create organic home gardens. We also distributed 300 passion fruit seedlings and 100 cinnamon seedlings.

Sewalanka’s team in Nuwara Eliya held seven environmental themed events including educational awareness programmes covering global warming, deforestation and coral regeneration. Recycling was covered in our waste awareness campaign and participants learnt how they could earn money by recycling, they were also encouraged to pick up and correctly dispose of any waste they saw in their villages. The campaign also held a litter picking competition for school children; the winners were selected by the amount of waste collected!

Other activities included compost preparation demonstrations, community water source cleaning, production and display of sign boards illustrating how to keep the environment clean and cleaning up our own office premises.

Through our national effort Sewalanka Foundation has contributed to the global effort to spread awareness of the importance of conservation and preservation of our planet for future generations.

For more information about Sewalanka's environment work, please contact environment@sewalanka.org or visit our newsletter page to see recent articles about our work.

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