Join Us! We are #GenerationRestoration in Uganda

2024’s World Environment Day campaign on 5th June had a focus on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience, using the universal slogan: “Our land. Our future. We are #GenerationRestoration.” The Day itself is the UN’s principal vehicle for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the environment. Held annually since 1973, the Day has also become a vital platform for promoting progress on environmental dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Sister Clicent Tumukunde sent the following report from Uganda:

“To celebrate World Environment Day 2024, we, Medical Mission Sisters in Uganda, gathered at the Malaba border between Uganda and Kenya to highlight the urgent need for collective environmental action. We invited the local population in Malaba Town to join our collective celebration, aimed at promoting Care of our Common Home and ensuring the well-being of people and planet. This involved reminding local people of what they can do to care for their environment and highlighted the pressing need for healthy, sustainable living in a town, situated on Kenya's western border with Uganda.  The celebration was also designed to raise awareness of the urgent need for climate action in the region.  The town’s citizens heard from us about UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 on Climate Action and what this calls on all of us to achieve.

The Day’s celebration began with talks and speeches, raising awareness of creation and how it is our collective responsibility to steward the environment. Images, highlighting this, were displayed on a colourful banner, which was paraded through the town. Afterwards, everyone came together to join us in cleaning the town’s drainage channels and streets, and some engaged in tree planting to re-green the area.  

What a warm welcome we received from the local community, who gladly supplied drinking water, hand sanitisers and the 40 litres of extra fuel we needed to drive from Tororo to Malaba and back home again! It was very encouraging to count the different groups and individuals among those who supported the Day’s activities – notably: members of the Malaba Catholic parish; students from St Peter’s College in Tororo; and the town’s leadership - its mayor, local officials, including the town’s principal health officer and representatives of the one stop border agency and immigration office, not to mention a multitude of local well-wishers.

On World Environment Day 2024, our common activities attracted the attention of local media, such as Next Media and Uganda’s Catholic television channel, who each covered the story very extensively.  Although we had planned to have about one hundred participants, we ended up welcoming many more than the expected number.  The majority were people from the Malaba community, who came along to listen to the talks, and then decided to stay on and engage in the cleaning up operation in their town. This shows how good networking encourages the community to participate in an activity and their “hands-on” involvement, in turn, helped them to own their responsibility in stewarding the environment after we had left.

The greatest challenge was that we ran out of heavy-duty gloves, gumboots and hand tools, like rakes and hoes, due to the overwhelming number of participants.  We'll take more along next time. Otherwise, we returned home to Tororo pleased to have demonstrated, alongside the people of Malaba, our strong commitment to leaving behind environmental degradation and adopting a change in lifestyle: “Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace and the joyful celebration of life.”  (Laudato si’, 207)”                                           

Well done, Unit Uganda-Malawi!

Announcing the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2024

Please see below for more what MMS is doing at the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 2024 to be held from Monday, 8 July, to Wednesday, 17 July 2024, at the UN Headquarters in New York:

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