Live Updates
• December 4 is the fourth annual Call to Earth Day.
• Young people across the world are taking part in a collective effort to help the planet
• Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Elsewhere in Lagos, Team Illuminate’s volunteers cleaned up the street in front of two community schools. More than 20 participants collected 10 bags of waste including plastic bags, sachets, cigarette packs, cans, bottles, and more.
Team Illuminate also educated over 120 high school students on the Call to Earth message, using the wisdom of Yoruba Proverbs.
Preventing plastic from polluting the waterways of Lagos, Nigeria, this community rallied around a cause to bring a little holiday cheer to all.
Using over 2,000 Green PET bottles, 300 community members constructed a massive Christmas Eco Tree.
“I love this tree because it was recycled,” a young community member explained.
Organized by the FABE International Foundation, the tree can be found alongside the Lekki Epe Highway in Lagos.
Pupils of Al Hekma International School in Bahrain have been busy cleaning the beaches of the Persian Gulf while reflecting on the Earth’s natural beauty in letters to their future selves.
Reminiscing about the “breathtaking” meadow view from the windowsill of their childhood home, student Rodayna penned her commitment to ensuring similar sights would endure for coming generations.
“Unfortunately, while some others may still appreciate this kind of scenery, many close their windows due to the polluted, filthy, orange sky,” Rodayna wrote. “Whenever they look outside, they find plastic waste. I hope you do something about this in your time, as this planet deserves to thrive and survive. These people deserve to see beautiful nature and breathe pure air.”
Fellow pupil Omar Mohamed Abdulrahman echoed that promise, writing: “I want to make a noticeable change that inspires others, so a ripple effect can be created. I truly cherish the world we live in.”
Ninety-five participants at Calpe Port in Alicante, Spain, gathered for a large-scale waste-clearing operation. Organized by Universidad Católica de Valencia San Vicente Mártir, part of the The EU-CONEXUS alliance, they cleaned up around a ton of waste from the seabed and surrounding areas, with the help of local partners.
The students of iELEV High School in Turkey voted to use art as the language for their message that “diversity is not a threat, but a richness.”
Having carefully chosen fabrics and photographs related to nature, culture, and humanity, a band of pupils weaved them into a collage resembling one of the natural symbols of change: a wave.
“We sought to emphasize that cultural differences around the world do not divide us but instead create connections, enabling us to live in harmony with nature and protect our environment as a shared responsibility,” the team said.
Pupils at IB Mthiebi in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi embarked on a month-long project to promote sustainable development in the country.
Titled “Explore, Preserve and Exhibit Georgia,” the educational initiative saw students ranging from 5 to 17-years-old plant sunflowers and clean up local areas, including a nearby church.
“We see it as our duty to clean our country and make it beautiful,” said Ketevan Lalashvili, one of the students involved in the project, in a video produced by the school.
Student volunteers of all ages from the Pinewood American International School took some time away from their classrooms to learn more about conservation efforts during a beach cleanup in Thessaloniki, Greece.
As part of their learning unit on Earth’s natural environments, animal habitats, and sustainability, students volunteered their time to clean up trash and debris from a local beach.
More than one year since the departure of the DARWIN200 voyage, which is retracing Charles Darwin’s most famous sea voyage from the UK to Australia, the DARWIN200 organization has run a series of initiatives to inspire a new generation of explorers.
As well as educating the young naturalists and conservationists on board its ship, the organization took more than 30 students on an underwater adventure to explore the wonders of the Sydney Harbour marine environment.
At The British of School of Beijing, Sanlitun, students are learning about the impacts of global shipping on climate change and the sheer number of products that are shipped from China.
“Shipping is responsible for 3.3% of carbon emissions,” says one student.
The kids are trialing different designs of sails on model boats in a tank in their classroom, to see which is the most efficient and to discover how this could help reduce carbon emissions from real ships traveling across oceans.
The Clean Surf Project and Amanzimtoti Primary School joined together to clean up 1.8 kilometers (one mile) of coastline between Baggies Beach to Winklespruit Beach in South Africa.
Fourth-graders, teachers and the Clean Surf Project team collected 25 bags of trash, including fishing line, fishing knives, plastic bags, and microplastics.
Partnering with four schools across Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria, Greenhill Recycling are working to tackle the huge problem of waste across the country.
“They tell us it wasn’t always this way. Long ago the skies were blue, streams were crystal, the land alive. But somewhere along the way, they forgot to care, forgot to clean,” says one student in a short video made for Call to Earth Day.
Through the impressive efforts of 130 students, the schools have collected almost 170 kilograms (375 pounds) of trash from around their communities.
Students at the Kuchatani Public School, in a village in eastern Georgia, are working to improve their local environment.
They are collecting litter from the local lake and then recycling it where they can. Plastic bottles, for example, are being used to create novelty flower beds.
Forty students at the UNRWA Nuzha Preparatory School in Amman, Jordan, cleaned their school yard and the surrounding area by collecting garbage.
The students came together to make their school environment a better place to learn.
Students at San Silvestre school in Lima, Peru, took to the beach for a litter sweep.
Children from secondary, primary and early years all got involved to help out.
Here’s how it went…
The Flying Eagles Learning School in Lagos, Nigeria, engaged in a community clean up of their local environment.
They will also be planting flowers and trees around the campus.
In Saudi Arabia, students at Zahrat Al-Sahra’a International School have been marking Call to Earth Day in a variety of ways.
First, students attended a sustainability seminar hosted by the Ministry of Environment.
Fourth-graders also participated in a beach clean up.
And third-graders reflected on their dreams and goals in relation to the climate by writing letters to their future selves.
EarthCorps, an organization focusing on leadership and community partnerships to advance environmental justice, has brought together 30 people for a clean up at Squally Beach, on Washington’s Pacific Coast.
Beach clean ups offer both a way of caring for the Earth and enjoying a day by the sea.
Students at Governor de Graaff School in Sint Eustatius, an island in the Caribbean Netherlands, were out in force in November cleaning up their local sports field.
In just one hour, the students collected 10 bags full of plastic bottles, glass containers, single-use bags and even some discarded shoes.
Students at Repton Abu Dhabi, Rose Campus, UAE, were tasked with writing a letter to their future selves, stressing the urgency of climate action.
Ahana Bhandary wrote about the power of hope, encouraging her future self to “study, be creative, and inspire others.”
Kindergarteners in Brooklyn, New York, built model homes with working rainwater harvesting systems – a technique used from Guatemala to India. Students landscaped their model homes with planters made from recycled plastic bottles, and planted seeds last week which are already sprouting.
