The Centre for Character and Leadership has collaborated with the East African Cables to donate tree seedlings in various Primary Schools across the country in an effort to scale up the adopt a tree and tag a virtue initiative.

The ‘Adopt a tree and tag a virtue initiative’ is a service-learning best practice which is implemented by involving the learners to plant, adopt and tag the trees with positive virtues which they aim to nurture in their life as the tree grows. The trees include both the indigenous and fruit trees. The learners take on the responsibility of caring for their tree and the development of their chosen virtue as a “personal project’ under the guidance of a teacher or staff mentor.

Through this initiative, learners are engaged in experiential learning activities that foster development of good character. This not only helps in enhancing students character growth and well-being but it’s also becoming a great education innovation towards promoting sustainable development goals such as food security and climate action. Additionally, trees growing in learning institutions is part of “mitigation measure that will see the country grow 15 billion trees consequently increasing the tree cover from the current 12 per cent to 30 percent by the year 2030.”

The recent beneficiaries of the adopt a tree and tag a virtue initiative includes Thika Primary School for the visually impaired in Kiambu County; Paranae Primary School and Osimlai gifted hands School in Kajiado County; and St. Michael Primary School, D.E.B Iveche Primary School and Kangaru D.E.B Primary school in Embu County.

In conclusion, the act of engaging learners to understand, internalize, nurture and model the virtues has a positive effect on school culture and climate. “Great improvement in terms of behavior and performance has been noticed in our school since the introduction of character and nurturing of virtues. Every stream in the school has chosen its own virtue and learners keep nurturing and modeling it in their day to day activities within school” said an elated teacher.