GAIN team member performing an activity together with school children

Fifteen thousand school children in the north of Afghanistan in some thirty schools are being encouraged to write essays and draw pictures on a healthier environment theme as part of the UNDP’s GAIN project, the Green Afghanistan Initiative.

The UNDP project, with a base in Mazar-e-Sharif, is supporting GAIN, in which several UN agencies have agreed in a joint effort to tackle the environmental degradation in Afghanistan.

GAIN aims to raise awareness in communities on environmental issues.

In the schools the awareness raising programme consists of three elements: essay and picture drawing competitions and multiple choice questionnaires.

Children from the ages of 10 to 11 years old are given assignments and their tasks are then reviewed by a committee of school teachers and UNDP-GAIN staff.

The best forty entries receive a prize and during the distribution of prizes, all school children are lined up in a gathering and told about the objectives of GAIN, including such issues as the advantages of sapling plantation and environmental protection.

School children aged six to nine years old have the chance to tackle verbal and written multiple choice questionnaires.

The UNDP’s GAIN team in Mazar plan for the awareness programmes to be conducted in 30 schools in urban and rural areas.

Through the programmes the school children find out about the impacts and positive effects of greening within a community, such as the filtering of air, the prevention of flooding, changing weather patterns and soil erosion.