The Centre for Character and Leadership (CCL) is collaborating with the East African Cables in planting trees in secondary schools across the  country. The pre-selected secondary schools are involved in the Implementation of the Cultivating Virtues in Leaders (CViL) Project. The CViL program seeks to guide the school principals and teachers on a personal and professional development journey. A journey of self-discovery and appreciation, a deep understanding of servant leadership virtues, character education, and skills necessary to lead school transformation.

Students are benefitting from the CViL project by getting coaching and mentorship from adult teachers who model and teach the virtues. Also, the CViL model gives an opportunity to the students to practice leadership skills such as being good communicators, resource builders, visionaries, problem solvers and role models to their peers.

For instance, students are engaged in the implementation of ‘Adopt a tree and tag a virtue initiative.’ This is a service-learning best practice that involves the students to plant, adopt and tag the trees with positive virtues which they aim to nurture in their life as the tree grows.

The ‘adopt a tree and tag a virtue initiative’ has a potential of helping students to mold their character through virtue development and as well address the issue of climate change. Climate change poses a serious challenge in Kenya. A key measure that has been adopted by the Kenyan government to mitigate the effects of climate change is to increase the forest cover by 10%.  With this background, CCL collaborated with the East African Cables in planting 400 indigenous trees at Kiamutugu Boys High school in Kirinyaga county.

“At East African Cables, we connect lives and endeavor to give back to the society through tree planting,” said Dr. Gatitu Gitau as he offered the tree donations to the school administrator.

The ‘adopt a tree and tag a virtue initiative’ is being spearhead by the school Moral club – a students’ peer group that is committed in modelling virtues and offering mentorship to other students’ peers. “If I don’t provide water to my tree, I feel like my character is fading,” said a Moral Club student as he urged the form one students to take care of their adopted trees.

During the tree planting, students tagged their trees with virtues such hard work, love, respect, obedience and joy. “Don’t just practice the virtue that you have tagged on your tree, practice other virtues as well,” said Millicent Diang’a , CViL Project Officer as she urged the students to become good role models and ambassadors of the school.

While protecting the environment and planting trees is a global responsibility, it is even more personal and requires collaborative effort to take the action. Wangari Maathai in her autobiography ‘Unbowed’ states that “the future of the planet concerns us all, and all of us should do what we can to protect it.”

Similar projects have been carried out at Drumvale secondary school and Ruai Boys Secondary School in Nairobi County. CCL appreciates the East African Cables for the donation of trees and the schools for taking ownership in environmental conservation and virtue development.