Campaign at Anglican Secondary School

This journal entry is part of the Zeeler Campaign campaign

Zeeler Campaign had earlier – on May 19, 2010 – paid a visit to the Principal of Anglican secondary school so seek approval to carry out some awareness among its students. After some discussion with the principal and letting her know of our intentions to bring some awareness to the school, we had some discussion and she referred us to the school gardener Mr. Adi. They really commended our efforts and hoped we would be able to effect the necessary attitudinal changes we intended.

On Friday 21 May 2010, three representatives of Zeeler Campaign were present for the class session with the senior students of Anglican Secondary School Makurdi; Elochukwu Ezenekwe (myself), Emmanuel Ajeyi, and Chinenye Constance.
Mr. Adi (in charge of conservation) with the Head Boy and other prefects helped organize the students and put every other thing in place. At exactly 12:10pm, the meeting kicked off with Mr. Adi introducing us to the students. After distribution of our fliers and few prints of the Agenda, there was opening prayer by one of the school students and an opening remark by me.
Although the students tried to be hesitant in the first few minutes, they soon became relaxed and flowed with the gist. About 12 students volunteered to hold our banner (two at a time) throughout the discussion period.
We had the students read the introductory part of the agenda and sought their explanation before giving a more detailed one, and engaging them in real discussion.
The topic of biodiversity and its importance was thought, and the students made unbelievable contributions – which we soon discovered was partly out of their knowledge of ecology which some were treating in class at the time. Apart from the general importance of biodiversity we all discussed, the students were able identify the benefits of the biodiversity in school to them as students and to the school management. Among others, they said the carpet grasses and flowers beatified the school, and that the trees acted as wind breaks. The later is very important as Anglican Secondary School had, prior to the planting and growth of the trees, suffered so much from storm during rains, which always did remove the roof of almost all the classes. The situation was bad at that time that students suffered so much to learn.
For our next visit, we told the students to investigate; more ways in which the ecosystem around the school compound is beneficial to them; their (the students) activities which destroy biodiversity and the measures they would be willing to take to rather protect the ecosystem.

The class ended at about 1:28pm and there were group photographs of us, in company of Mr. Adi and few of the students who made good contributions.

In all, the class was enlightening and so exciting, that more than one hour passed without our noticing it – the time appeared to be too short.
Zeeler Campaign hopes that the students will come to be more conscious of the importance of biodiversity, that they will have an insight into the great risk of continually loosing it to erosion processes like the very severe ones in Nanka. And hence, be willing to take action against climate change which we understand is one of the most important drivers of the gully erosion and landslide processes.
We hope to involve the very interested students in an activity – most likely an awareness march around Makurdi – which will be targeted at the media.

Thanks for reading, and please do not hesitate to send in comments and suggestions, or even give a support.