Today’s Good People, Good Works will be presented in Bassa and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

HOST (IN BASSA): Hallo, environment-loving viewers, welcome to Good People, Good Works. Today we travel to the Central African nation of Cameroon to visit with members of the non-profit environmental organization Green Cameroon.

Based in the city of Buea, the capital of Cameroon’s Southwest Region, Green Cameroon was established in 2003 by an enthusiastic group of students and professionals in order to create a more sustainable environment, protect biodiversity, and mitigate climate change. Green Cameroon conducts community outreach by creating environmental groups in schools, inviting teenagers to participate in service projects to safeguard nature and so on.

Through their devoted work, environmental awareness is being strengthened in Cameroon. Because forests absorb enormous amount of carbon dioxide and thus are important carbon sinks for the planet, Green Cameroon gives free seedlings to those in the Southwest Region. The tree and plants distributed, are fast-growing varieties. Masango Sone, the founder of Green Cameroon now tells us more.

Masango Sone(m): For our tree nursery program, we grow these trees in our nurseries, and when they are ready for transplanting, we give them to members of the communities that is men and women, those who have land and they plant them. Some plant them in their compounds and they serve as shade against sunlight, some plant them just to beautify the place, and others use them for their medicinal value.

Peter Ngwe Ekan(m): I am a farmer in Buea town. I want to give thanks, enormous thanks to Green Cameroon for providing me with seedlings for these banana trees behind me and also the seedlings for this live fence to protect my crops. Previously, I didn't have anything in the garden until they provided me with the seeds for the bananas. So after planting them, I have been harvesting and the crops are doing really well. I am really grateful to them.

HOST: Many in developing nations use wood as cooking fuel. Not only does this lead to an enormous number of precious trees being felled, but burning wood inside homes creates harmful indoor air pollution which is detrimental to the residents’ wellbeing. Green Cameroon strives to address these important issues by providing free clean-burning stoves to households through the Fuel Efficient Stoves Project, a partnership between Green Cameroon and the German Development Service, now known as the German Society for International Cooperation.

Masango Sone(m): Our services make a lot of difference in the community. For example, with the fuel efficient stoves, they are first of all environmentally very healthy, they help to reduce the quantity of smoke in the kitchen.

Masango Sone(m): So this is one of our fuel efficient stoves. It is dried as you can see and almost ready for use. And we simply do it by collecting some soil, a special type of red soil that contains a little bit of clay, we mix it with a good quantity of salt and some dried leaves. The stove you see here, this one is dried already and in a short while will be ready for use in cooking.

Lydia Likowo Kuve(f): What I have experienced with this stove is that it has enormous heat output. When I place a pot on it, I realize that the pot boils faster than when I do so on the fire with stones. And even if the stove is extinguished, it still retains some heat such that if it’s something to be warmed, when you place it there, it warms it well. I thank Green Cameroon for this stove which they have made for me which helps me a lot. Now I utilize less firewood than with the normal stone fireplace.

Masango Sone(m): And from our studies, we realized that these have the capability of saving wood consumption up to 40% and we saw that this is good for the preservation of our forests to reduce the level of consumption of forest trees. And so we built these fuel efficient stoves for community members which they use and it intends helps to cut down the consumption of wood fuel. The women who use the fuel efficient stoves can cook faster than they used to cook when they were using the three stones fireplace and also we build the stoves for them free of charge, so they really don't have anything to worry about. You see the material we use to build the stoves, it's all local material.

HOST: Children are the future leaders of the world. Green Cameroon believes environmental education should start from childhood, thus it helps students nurture deep love and respect for nature. Green Cameroon runs the popular School Environmental Clubs Program which works with schools from nursery level to high school.

Masango Sone(m): We don't have environmental education as a subject in the school program, and our youth grow up with very little or no knowledge about environmental issues. So we come in with the School Environmental Clubs Program to fill in this vacuum that is created by the absence of the environmental education as a subject in their school program. So with the clubs we teach the students many things that concern the environment and we make them know what they can do to care for the environment and to live a better life in harmony with the environment.

Lea Kreatschmer (f): Hallo! My name is Lea Kreischmer. I am from Germany. I am a volunteer sent by the German Development Organization. I have been working here with Green Cameroon now for five months. I am working in some schools, for example, in Buea town, but also in Molyko. And there we have some school environmental clubs. I teach the students about the environmental science and then I also have a program which is here in the village Bova Two, or Bonakanda and Bova One, where I built some fuel efficient stoves for the women here in the kitchen.

Ndive Abel Wanjo (m): I am a teacher of a government secondary school in Buea town. I want to acknowledge the fact that Green Cameroon has been doing its work in our school. We have had a lot (of its help) in our school as you can see from the plants behind us. We have gardens behind our campus where students do some farming, and this has really been helping the students to know much about the environment.

HOST: Now let’s visit with some of the students who belong to the Baptist High School’s 62-member strong Environmental Club and find out about their exciting eco-activities.

Gerald Arung Bate(m): My name is Gerald Arung Bate in BHS (Baptist High School), class 2-B and I am also in the Environmental Club. Since they have taught us about global warming, I know that when we plant trees they help to absorb CO2 from the air and because of that it helps to keep our environment cool. Ejoh Charlotte Bessem(f): My name is Ejoh Charlotte Bessem from class 4-B. I am a member of the Environmental Club. Before I came to the Environmental Club, I did not know so many things about the environment, but I learned how to take care of my environment like, for example, keeping it clean to keep me free from diseases like malaria.

And I have also learned how to keep my own nursery like to plant trees to help in the afforestation now to reduce the rate of global warming. I learned how to keep my nursery now and how to plant seeds. When they have reached a certain level like after three months, I could remove them and plant them in the bushes in the forest or in my own land so that it could also prevent global warming.

Bafon Kings(m): We have tried as much as possible to open up membership to all the students. If it’s possible that all the students are members of the club, it will really be wonderful, because the environment is directly linked to life. As the children will be growing, they will grow with this knowledge. And they will not only carry out environmental management on the campus, they will also take it out to their houses and they will keep on spreading this information.

If you look around we have posters designed by the students under the auspices of Green Cameroon. We want them to use the knowledge they will get from the Environmental Club and from the environment to better their lives even when they leave school because I am sure that the environment offers a great deal of employment opportunities to them.

And I am hoping to also incorporate other teachers, like the teachers of biology. You know they are also linked to the environment , even chemistry teachers, every other teacher who will be interested, I will also bring them into the club because in so doing they will incorporate parts of environmental education into their lessons.

HOST: Here are some closing thoughts from Masango Sone.

Masango Sone (m): I think if all of us as individuals try to contribute the minimum to serving the community, we would have better communities than we have today. So my call is to raise the consciousness of community members that once in a while, we should try to do something that is not really geared towards our own- self-gratification but do something that can serve humankind or that would benefit our population so that at the end of the day, we should be proud to say we've done something that we can leave behind for posterity.

Students: Be Veg, Go Green to 2 Save the Planet!

HOST: Thank you Green Cameroon staff and volunteers for your wonderful environmental protection initiatives. May your projects further raise the eco-awareness of the Cameroonian people, thereby benefiting our beautiful home, Earth.

For more details on Green Cameroon, please visit: www.GreenCameroon.org

OUTRO (IN BASSA): Perceptive viewers, thank you for joining us on today’s Good People, Good Works. Coming up next is The World Around Us, after Noteworthy News. May all beings be embraced with Heaven’s everlasting love.