Wednesday

Toolkit for environmental education for Kenyan Faiths developed

By Henry Neondo

A non-governmental organisation is developing an environmental education toolkit to help the Kenyan faiths come up with appropriate curriculum for use in educational facilities they run. 
Dr Dorcas Otieno, the Executive Director, Kenya Organization of Environmental Education (KOEE) said in the sidelines of the ongoing meeting of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation in Nairobi, Kenya that the toolkit recognises that Faiths are managing the youth who represents the future of any society. 
Dr Otieno said the toolkit is about sustainable development which espouses values that include a call for respect for the environment, equality in sharing the natural resources and environmental care. 
She said these values appeared common and cross cutting through religious groups which included, the Catholic, the Protestant churches, Muslims, and Hindu at meetings held between the KOEE and the Faiths in the recent past. 
Dr Otieno said the faiths recognise that the challenges of water, sanitation, and health, agriculture and waste management in the era of climate change need active participation of the Faith to be solved.
She said the toolkit aims to address these issues through empowering the youth and children in Schools and colleges managed by the faiths.
Already, she said, teachers have been identified from 35 schools across the country and trained on how to implement the toolkit.
The teachers have already formed eco-schools that emphasize hands on experience. Out of these, nine schools are already running pilot projects that implement the toolkit with clear demonstration of conservation with religious values.
Dr Otieno said environment care is proving to be one route through which many faiths and religious groups can be united.
Already churches like the Methodist Church in Kenya with three million members, a university, major hospital and 533 schools, has drawn up its own long-term environmental plan. It has commuted to set up an Intensive Agricultural Training Centre to train in environmentally friendly and sustainable farming techniques, and will also organize creation awareness courses in schools and on radio programmes.
“The initiative to draw an environmental policy for our church was born following a conference with ARC in 2011 in Nairobi,” said presiding bishop of the Methodist Church in Kenya Rev Fr Stephen Kanyaru M’Impwii.
ARC’s head of Africa projects Alison Hilliard said it was inspiring to see all the extraordinary work being done by faiths in Africa. “I have been working on these programmes for many years, and I am constantly surprised and moved by the creative and energetic responses from faiths. Each plan is different, according to what the faith can do, and sees is important. I look forward, many years into the future, to seeing the fruits of these extraordinary initiatives being launched today.”
The programme emphasised the centrality in all faiths of thanksgiving and celebration for creation; it included singing and a chanted poem from the choir of All Saints Cathedral Primary School and the girl’s choir from the Muslim Academy, Nairobi.

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