Bulawayo Church aims to plant 7000 trees

ZDDT National Development Officer (NDO), Simon Spooner, caught sight of the church members planting trees along Samuel Parirenyatwa Street in the Central Business District.

This led to a brief telephone interview between ZDDT Field Correspondent, Ntando Sibanda (NS), and Christ Embassy Bulawayo Pastor, Kudakwashe Mututu (KM).

NS: What motivated you, as a church, to embark on this tree planting exercise?

KM: We are part of the stakeholders of the city and our President, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, gave us a theme that every church unit must turn into a forest, so we translated that and got involved in this project. We believe that people need trees to breathe clean air. We have a programme called Reachout Zimbabwe and we are taking this as a way of giving back to the community.

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NS: How many trees did you plant, the other weekend, when you met up with our NDO?

KM: We planted 200 trees on the street and then proceeded to plant an orchard of about 40 trees at Gifford High School.

NS: Was this a once-off event or it is an on-going exercise?

KM: This is an on-going exercise. We contacted the City Council to give us a list of all the trees they need and they told us that they need about 7 000 trees to plant in all the major roads in the CBD. We are now looking at partnering with the business community so that we can achieve this goal. The good thing is that most of the business people come to our church.

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NS: What would be your next step after planting all these trees?

KM: We want to embark on a programme of spreading environmentally friendly messages so that people can see real value in preserving their environment.

ZDDT’s policies and principles have a strong bias towards the preservation of the environmentin order to improve neighbourhoods, hence its decision to join the global “Go Green” bandwagon. This has seen it support local communitiestoplant over 3 000 trees in Bulawayo and, in the process, receive recognition from international bodies, such as the United Nations, which awarded the Trust with “Plant a Billion Trees” certification.