On the 5th of June CLEAR Community celebrated World Environment Day in fantastic, craftastic style at our very own Bale Tau. The day kicked off with a rigorous clean of the river that runs right alongside our land. The boys started work at 8am so as to avoid the midday sun and in about two hours we managed to collect and sort three full bags of rubbish before sending them off to our newly built recycling centre. Well done boys! It’s safe to say we left behind a very clean, green river.
After some much needed snacks and water to re-energise and rehydrate the CLEAR Community team, which was now joined by a few, new younger members, began their tree planting projects. Using old bamboo that had floated down the river and into our raft we chopped away to fashion ourselves eight eco, plastic-free plant pots. We then got creative (and a little messy!) as we painted our bamboo plant pots with trees, flowers, rainbows and whatever else we wanted with loads of different colours before leaving them to dry in the hot, hot sun!
While our paintwork was drying we had many friends and community members arrive to enjoy a big feast as it was the day before the beginning of Ramadan and also our wonderful manager, Yadi’s, birthday. We lay out some banana leaves for our food on the Bale Tau wooden floor so that we could all sit in a large circle, exchanging English with Bahasa between mouthfuls of the most delicious, traditional Indonesian food.
After our food had settled and the paint had dried we ended the afternoon with potting seedlings into our newly decorated bamboo pots. They looked great and the children have now taken them home to nurture and eventually plant in their own gardens to grow them into what will hopefully be big, juicy rambutan trees. As we all know trees are incredibly important as they directly combat climate change, provide our oxygen in doing so, and promote a healthy eco-system for our environment.
Happy World Environment Day from all of us at CLEAR Community. We would love to hear how you might have celebrated WED, or perhaps about something you’ve recently done to help our environment. Don’t be afraid to get in touch at info@clearcommunity.org.
