Caritas Freetown Celebrates World Environment Day
By Mohamed Konneh
With support from Caritas Germany, Caritas Freetown on Wednesday 5th June 2024 celebrated World Environment day with a symposium. The symposium was held at the Sierra Leone national railway museum compound Cline Town in Freetown on the theme: Land Restoration, Desertification and Drought Resilience. The celebration is part of project title: Increase Management of Vast Urban slums and restore trees in Hill Top Communities in Western Area Sierra Leone.
Speaking during the symposium the project Manager at Caritas Freetown Idriss Gibson Mansaray said protecting and keeping the environment clean is important as this must be part of people daily activities.
“Cleaning the communities where we live must be maintain as failure to do so will have negative impact on the society,” he said.
This year’s World Environment Day celebration by Caritas Freetown was done with stakeholders in four communities including Culvert, Susan’s Bay, Moyiba and Leicester communities respectively.
These slum communities on this day where educated on the importance of keeping their environment clean and healthy.
Community stakeholder Francis Bala while responding to the message said every community member must ensure to plant a tree in their backyard and communities.
He said by this natural disasters will be avoided adding that flooding occurs every year because of the way we deal with the environment.
Mr. Bala said most people do not disposed of their rubbish properly and the reason why gutters and drainages are always blocked with garbage.
Senesie Koroma is the Project team lead at Caritas Freetown who elaborated on the project and the important of the four communities.
Mr. Koroma noted that the two communities were targeted because of their vulnerability noting that anytime there is every rain these communities will experience flooding.
He said the education of these communities are important adding that World environment day is the day set aside to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the environment but more so draw the attention of about their promises World leaders about their promises.
He called on the people to be planting trees within their community as this is very important and will help protect them.
He said the day is celebrated with Charity Sierra Leone a strong partner in protecting the environment.
He said Caritas Freetown has always participate actively in slum communities development in making their lives better adding that World Environment day is to raises awareness on the protection of the environment within these communities.
