After quite enough time of looking into the environmental protection and climate justice concerns, Orion Basketball Team determined to initiate the ‘One Shot One Tree Green Campaign’ on which they inscribed an MoU with FERWABA in Kigali, July 21.
Climate change has been a global warming issue and so different individuals and organizations are taking various actions to protect the environment. It is in such a call that Orion initiated the ‘One Shot One Tree Green Campaign’ which is starting in November 2023 where they will combine the top six teams in the league and plant the trees equivalent to the sum number of shots that they will be having as they envision to plant 100,000 trees in a year.
Both Orion Basketball Team and FERWABA officially signed the Memorandum of Understanding as the bridge to very many coming partnerships to come. Starting with the campaign to ensure climate justice and environmental protection as well as recycling, on which both ends revealed that it will be an ongoing competition on a yearly basis.
James Mutabazi, the Orion Basketball Club said that they are doing this to support the already existing country’s ambition in climate justice and environmental protection with a drive to create more awareness, “Rwanda is among the green economy growing countries. The agenda of the government is to promote climate justice and environmental protection to a level of reducing 30% of carbon emissions. To read that there is a need for a lot of green surroundings, electric transport, and recycling, people shall be aware of everything, including why they need to plant trees in their backyards.”
The president of FERWABA, Desire Mugwiza expressed his gratitude to the Orion team for such a thoughtful initiative to make the country green and beyond. He said, “This is not just about basketball and planting trees, it will even go beyond that to the country’s development from its people. There will be some campaigns to plant trees and many more.”
The campaign is set for November due to the fact that the champion and all-star game end in October, plus that November is the tree planting month, and the number of trees to be planted will be known based on what the results from the tournaments will be, according to the shots.
Dr Ivan GASANGWA, the Forest Research Division Manager at Rwanda Forestry Authority emphasised on the support towards this as he confirmed that their institution is fully in and willing to technically support this amazing ambition to ensure the possibility of this campaign by all means possible.
