By Patience Chelimo

The Environmental Society Club (ENSO) held a week long Environmental event dubbed ENSO Week from Tuesday, 4- Friday, 7, October, 2022. This event was held in celebration of World Animals Day, World Oceans Day, World Environment Day and World Giraffes Day which all took place on various dates this year.

ENSO week kicked off with various activities being held such as: upcycling and painting single use plastic bottles into pots for growing succulent plants, making environmentally themed stickers, adopting trees, and peer to peer discussions on environmental issues and what kind of action can be taken to help save our planet.

Tashley Riiba, a lead volunteer at ENSO, led a discussion aimed at raising awareness on ocean pollution in the Taiwan Sea and on the endangered marine life at the Kenyan coast. The discussion highlighted the importance of reducing and properly disposing single use plastics which has been polluting our oceans.

Day two saw the club partner with local activists from the Growth 4 Change Community who gave a talk educating the students on their Hydroponics farming project dubbed ‘Food is Politics’. This sustainable project has been made available by various groups under the Growth 4 Change platform to communities in neighborhoods such as Dandora, Baba Dogo and Korogocho to help them grow healthy and fresh foods.

In the final days of ENSO Week, the members as well as other USIU-Africa students who adopted trees convened and walked to the USIU -Africa sports grounds to planted over one hundred trees of various species, including Eucalyptus, Cypress and assorted fruit trees. This initiative will indeed increase the University’s tree cover, countering the effects of deforestation.

The Environmental Society club also invited the Africa Collect Textile, a community that collects textiles and shoes for reuse and recycling from around the country. Africa Collect Textile installed a textile bin drop off point in USIU-Africa where students can now make a sustainable change and donate their textile waste in a more sustainable manner.

The ENSO Vice-Chair noted that these events were just the beginning of the Society’s activities for the semester, adding that there were more activities in the pipeline, including the introduction of new recycling bins on campus to help with waste management and recycling at the dumping sites.

The event ended with a day trip to The Giraffe Center to celebrate World Giraffe Day which helps raise awareness on the endangered Rothschild giraffe, one of the 3 giraffe species found in Kenya.

For more information on the Society and how to become a member, click here.