Celebrating Godfrey Olukya Masanda, his team and their work.
Meet Godfrey Olukya Masanda in Uganda.
Godfrey has established the Uganda Chapter of World Climate School and he and his team are now educating a large number of students from different schools. Donating seedlings to the students and having them plant trees is an essential part of the education.
Below he is introducing the work they are doing:
Godfrey talking about his background:
I am called Godfrey Olukya Masanda. I was born in 1969 in eastern Uganda town of Jnja.
I studied primary education at Walukuba primary school in Jinja town. I then went to Kakira senior secondary school for secondary education and advanced education.
I later joined Makerere university where I acquired a bachelor of arts degree in education.
I taught in several secondary schools in the country before joining Kampala school of journalism where I acquired a diploma in journalism.
From 1997 to 2000 I worked with the leading newspaper in the country, New Vision.
Between 2000 and 2012 I was the correspondent of the world’s biggest news agency, AP, based in the USA. Many stories I did for AP can be googled under my name Godfrey Olukya.
Since 2013 I work as deputy news editor for Bushenyi FM radio. I also freelance for several international news agencies and magazines including Anadolu News Agency, Ozy magazine in USA, ChinaAfrica magazine and Africa Virtueonline, an Anglican Church magazine.
While working as a journalist I have undergone several short courses and workshops on environment,climate and forestry.
Proud students after being educated by Godfrey and his team, and receiving seedlings:
And the story continues – Connecting to World Climate School:
Having got concerned about the rate at which trees were being cut down, leading to wiping out forests and degradation of wetlands by farmers, hence contributing to climate change, I came up with an idea of educating students about climate change. I started with a few schools near where I live.
In the process, I came across a female environmentalist, who connected me to World Climate school. I contacted Mr Hans Jorgen of World Climate School, and he advised me to start a group of people interested in learning about Climate Change and also help to fight against it.
That is how became the leader at World Climate School – Uganda. I managed to get 25 members, mostly teachers and journalists . We went through several online lectures conducted by Mr Hans.
Later I developed an idea of distributing tree seedlings to students to plant at their schools and also take some to their homes. My colleagues endorsed the idea and I selected 5 members with whom we started distributing seedlings, which we bought using funds we contributed from our salaries.
From the beginning the exercise was successful. Students were eager to learn and they became excited when we distributed to them seedlings.
So far we have visited 25 primary schools and 30 secondary schools and distributed about 40,000 seedlings.Uganda has over 25,000 schools countrywide and so if we are to cover all the schools we have a lot to do.
Our major bottleneck, for which we need help, is getting funds to buy the seedlings.
More images from the schools:
About World Climate School Uganda:
World Climate School -Uganda is made up of 25 members, mostly teachers and journalists. We are all in a WhatsApp group called World Climate School UGA.
The members are from all over the country. We all got lectures on climate school online conducted by Mr Hans from World Climate School.
From the 25 members, I selected 5 most active members, with whom I have been supplying seedlings in schools. Among the 5 are David Musenze, Isac Senabulya, Steven Kakooza, Davis Lubale and Fred Mugira.
Some members in the group are very cooperative to the extent that they once in a while contribute money to buy seedlings which we supply in schools.
NB: We decided to call our project ,”Greening Uganda through schools.”
Many schools have contacted us about teaching their schools on climate change and supplying seedlings, but we can not reach all of them due to shortage of funds.
World Climate School Uganda has its own Facebook Page: Please visit, like and share:
https://www.facebook.com/World-Climate-School-Uganda-Chapter-108305708107384