Background
The University of Kisubi (UniK) was admitted to the global consortium for Service Learning (SL) under the auspices of UNISERVITATE in December 2020. UNISERVITATE is an umbrella organisation that brings together over 20 Catholic-founded universities and institutions of higher education worldwide, which embrace Service Learning as a novel pedagogy for 21st century education. This pedagogy extols problem-based active learning, where learners are placed at the center of the entire learning process and experiences as a way of equipping them to translate the knowledge and skills learnt in class into practical solutions to life’s everyday challenges they encounter individually and in the communities where they live. This way, these learners are appropriately prepared not only to become drivers of positive change and transformation within their immediate and remote communities, but also engaged active citizens who always strive to improve their living conditions and those of their communities.
The Service Learning Tree Green Campaign
This is one of the interventions the Service Learning Programme at UniK has lined up as an outreach awareness campaign to the University community and its neighbourhood, in an effort to sensitise the wider society on the increasing danger of climate change that is reaching catastrophic levels to-date, and the pressing need for our communities to rise to the occasion and avert this looming disaster. The dangers posed by a worsening climate crisis, if it continues unchecked, are clearer today than at any one time, and we are already tasting some of their bitter manifestations. These include but are not limited to the unprecedented effects of global warming in form of the worryingly shorter rainy seasons juxtaposed with longer spells of the dry season and the scorching sun, which are creating a real threat to food security and the abundance of food that our country has always enjoyed.
Restoration of the safe, clean environment and the good climate to support healthy living of the world’s populations and especially the mainstay of the African peoples who mostly depend on nature for their production and survival is a major preoccupation of the UniK Service Learning Programme. This is why from its inception, we chose the Service Learning Tree as its Symbol and Logo. We believe that the call for the restoration of the environment is both ardent and urgent, with every member of society having their key role to play, however small.
Through the Service Learning Tree Green Campaign, the UniK Service Learning Programme is seeking to provide leadership and mobilization to build a strong coalition of partners with whom to identify and implement innovative solutions to the growing danger and threat of climate change, and all its consequences. Your school has been identified to be part of this effort, and this is the reason why this invitation is extended to you.
Will You Join the Campaign?
The Coordination Team of the UniK Service Learning Programme recently decided to champion a school-level campaign with the aim of raising awareness and gradually to engage in joint projects geared towards environmental restoration and arresting the effects of climate change. The initiative targets students and the school community to ensure that the campaign’s objectives and goals are integrated into the learning process and experiences of the learners, who are tomorrow’s citizens and leaders. We believe that this will prepare and deliver a generation of better citizens that is more sensitive, keen and responsive to the protection of the environment, to create a better world for all.
We would like to have a deeper conversation with you concerning this initiative. We would specifically wish to know what you are already doing in your school that is in line with what we are proposing to you. Or what kind of support or partnership you would wish the UniK Service Learning Programme to provide you with. On our part, we will be ready to collaborate with your school on this undertaking especially through our Service Learning Club to accomplish any projects we will mutually agree to pursue jointly. We look forward to a rich and collaborative experience, as together we play our small part in an effort to reverse a climate crisis on rampage.