UN Women has already gone ahead of the International Women's Day Celebration. Celebrating people of every gender, religion, country, age, and ethnicity, this organization has driven actions to make a gender-equal world that everyone deserves.
Meet 22-year-old Joan Tonui, this year's Miss Environment, and an ideal example of the said celebration of every deserving person in Kenya.
Tonui won the championship title in Bomet.
Her winning factor was that she told the jury about wanting to work with children and women to raise awareness of living in a clean environment.
Miss Environment said she also wanted to teach both women and children about waste management in urban areas. Her background in public health focused on sanitation and water had taught Tonui how some countries segregate wastes into different categories including paper, glass, and paper.
She also wanted to introduce this particular concept to local primary schools.
In connection to this, the beauty titlist began to visit schools already and introduce them to her program and "taking it beyond waste management" for their mobilization to put up tree nurseries to grow fruit trees, as well as indigenous tree seedlings from which the community can later plant on school grounds.
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The Green Champions Program
Miss Environment's initiative was turned into what's now called the Green Champions Programme. Under this project, she sets up contests and the students who show eloquence on ecological issues the most through their drawings, essays, school plays or poetry get to win the Green Champion title.
The main idea here is that, those who will be declared champion will, in turn, entice other pupils to partake in the Green Champions Club. Here, club members are tasked to take care of the nursery and put up green days at their respective schools with activities like planting trees or collecting garbage.
Each of the students adopts a tree, assigns a name in it and takes care of it until it matures. And when the time comes when the kids need to leave school, they then, pass it on to the new pupils.
At present, Tonui said, she has managed to "introduce this programme in several primary schools in Bomet County. However, she added she's excitedly looking at expansions to other countries.
Ten-year-old Samaya who is also part of Tonui's project said, even when people cut down trees, no one can stop those involve in her advocacy, from replanting. She has encouraged her parents too, to plant more and more trees.
Tonui's River Guardians
Working children in school are not the only commitment Tonui has as part of her activities in her advocacies. She is also mobilizing women and youths who live the riverbanks.
They are what she calls her "River Guardians" who are volunteers that help replant and replace the eucalyptus trees that threaten the Mara River and intensify problems with drought.
In this project, the Kenyan beauty titlist shared, she approached the elders and village chiefs to make way into communities and ask them to choose volunteers who'd work with her on the eucalyptus and replace it with bamboos and indigenous trees like the avocado trees, among others.
In turn, Tonuio organized training sessions for the volunteers in the establishment of alternative livelihoods like crafting handbags using bamboo leaves.
Even the volunteers came up with ideas of the things they'd like to learn.Therefore, they added beekeeping to the program.
In just six months, Miss Environment has already brought five different villages on board as they understand the long-term advantages of shielding the river.
