This year’s Compassion Games Earth Week has finished successfully with Play for Peace clubs joining hands to honor Mother Earth across the world through a series of activities at the end of April. One of the clubs engaged in this meaningful event is the Nepal Friendship Society based in Bharatpur, the fifth largest city of Nepal situated in the central-southern part of the country. Founded in 2012, the Nepal Friendship Society (NFS) holds the vision to improve the quality of life of poor and marginalized people, raising awareness in the community of Nepal by enabling sustainable development. To realize their vision, NFS is active in empowering and helping children, youth, and women within their communities through education. This year they have joined Play for Peace to participate in Earth Week organizing activities at their learning centre and Siddhi Janakalyan Primary School to promote the awareness of community-based sustainable development and the importance of friendly environment practices. The vice head teacher from the Siddhi Janakalyan Primary School shared, “I always believe that children are the future of the nation. They should act rather than speaking and read theoretically. Practical education can make a difference.” Sharing the same belief, NFS has organized school cleanup activities at this primary school in the Chitwan district so that students can participate and learn that they can make a difference to Mother Earth, for example, starting with keeping their school clean.
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Showing respect to Mother Earth can be as simple as keeping your school clean and it is easy and fun![/caption] The cleanup activity was extended to the community of Chitwan where Chitwan citizens realized their connection and roles with Mother Earth by taking their responsibilities to clean their community to make the Chitwan district an environmentally friendly and healthier place to live.
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Chitwan citizens gathered to clean their community and make it a greener and healthier place to live.[/caption] Since the theme of this year’s Earth Week is #WaterIsLife, NFS has also coordinated activities where children and youth get to learn about the importance of water and its influence on Mother Earth. Instead of giving them the information directly, students were asked to brainstorm ideas of why water is important and share what existing and potential problems they can recall, which are related to water sources. [caption id="attachment_8889" align="alignnone" width="300"]
A brainstorm with the students – Water is life and how we can tackle the water-related problems.[/caption] As pointed out by the students, planting trees could be one solution for reducing landslide or flooding problems. NFS has therefore planted trees with the students in Chitwan during Earth Week. The students learnt that trees give oxygen and improve air quality, conserve water and support wildlife. One of the students was so fascinated by the power of trees and suggested, “We can start taking initiation to plant a tree on our birthday!”
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“Who wants to protect our Mother Earth and plant some trees?” “Me!” “Me!” “Me!”[/caption] There are just so many ways we can show our appreciation to our living environments. Start with yourself – you will realize how closely connected we are with Mother Earth and small actions like keeping waste out of water could already relieve our Mother Earth of further damage. What’s more, as the Earth Week participants in Nepal have pointed out, “the connection (with Mother Earth) makes you positive, happy and friendly.” and “(we have) so much connection with Earth and sharing (with) Nature creates us peace.” With so many benefits Mother Earth offers us, we should protect it at all costs. Why not continue our effort of Earth Week in our everyday life? Show your compassion and honor Mother Earth! 
