By Bakah Derick
Caneroon Gender and Environment Watch (CAMGEW) Saturday 16 April 2022 continued her environmental education program for children with focus on the importance of honey bee to man and the environment.
"We saw that it is important to build future nature lovers and to make them real nature lovers with what is happening now where very few people care about the environment; that we should start instilling in some children that live for nature. So we decided to run this program every Saturday for about two hours and you see how they play here which is like a child friendly space though we oriented it towards the environment and love for nature." Wirsiy Emmanuel Binyuy, CAMGEW's Director told www.hilltopvoices.com.
For over two hours the CAMGEW center Bamenda, the children were given lessons on how honey bee world and how they help in plants pollination. The children were shown some of the products of honey like wax, soap, vaseline, Power detergent and body lotion.
"Our dream is that, let children either in rural areas where natural resources are found or in the urban area, they should be able to have the opportunity to see the way nature looks like so that as they grow up, they will know how to value nature, how to love nature and how to live together with nature. Without nature, we will not be happy. When we destroy nature, we will.have problems of climate change and deforestation and no body will care. No matter the field where they work be it policy, farming, NGOs or wherever they work, they will always factor in environmental protection in their various careers. By that, their careers will become green jobs and eventually we have people who will want to protect the environment and hand it to the next generation." CAMGEW Director added.
Started in the Kilum-Ijim forest area where CAMGEW has been working for many years, CAMGEW has integrated environmental education for children every saturday in Bamenda as part of her activities.
Created in 2007, CAMGEW has been working in and around the Kilum-Ijim forest area where they promote inclusive forest regeneration with the planting of over 100 thousand trees as of 2021 and training of over 2000 to benefit from non-timber forest products especially in the honey and medicinal value chains.