The Gambian super star singer Sanna Singhateh has over the weekend led a team of volunteers to plant mahogany seedlings at the Greenville in Gunjur, the country’s first certified eco-friendly estate owned by Global Properties.
“We are delighted to have ST here with us to plan trees for this estate,” said Nyillan Fye of Global Properties. “We will continue to partner with ST to plant more trees in the Estate and to support his Foundation’s million trees initiative.”
Last year, ST Da Gambian Dream – as he is known on stage – launched the ST Foundation for Environment Awards, throwing his weight behind the global campaign for environment protection.
Through this initiative, ST is set out to plant a million trees over the next five years. He’ll also stage an annual award to recognise and reward environment heroes.
The exercise on Saturday is part of that effort towards meeting the goal of planting million trees, ST said at the event. He added that one way to mitigate the effects of climate change is to live responsibly towards the environment and by planting more trees.
“We all have a role to play to conserve our environment for our generation and the next generation. Our action towards nature has made us vulnerable towards climate change,” he added, highlighting rising sea levels and food insecurity as consequences of climate change.
Ismaila Fadera, one of the coordinators of the ST Environment Awards said mahogany is one of the many tree species the Foundation will be planting in partnership with various stakeholders across.
“Mahogany is becoming extinct in the country,” Fadera said. “It is already an endangered species like rosewood – Kenno, AFZELIA AFRICANA – Lenko and many other trees we used to have in the country. But we lost all of them to logging.
“Our Foundation has seedling sites in various communities in the country working with women and youth farmers.”
Louise Jatta, a volunteer with the Foundation, calls on corporate entitites to emulate the efforts of Global Properties and to renew commitment towards helping reverse the effects of climate change.
