Nigeria Eden - Berom Community Secondary

The Big Give Christmas Challenge is open!

The Big Give Christmas Challenge 2022 is now open! This means that until noon on 6 December any donation you make through our campaign page on the Christmas Challenge website* will be doubled (while match funds last).

Campaign target: £34,000

Your gifts to support A Rocha’s environmental education (EE) through last year’s Big Give made a difference: thanks to your generosity, teachers, church leaders and A Rocha staff gathered in May at Kira Farm in Uganda for an A Rocha EE conference and workshops. Together we strengthened capacity for EE and built on the excellent work already being carried out by A Rocha organizations across Africa. Participants explored the role of EE to reconnect people and nature and inspire action for a sustainable world. Teachers and church leaders went home enthused and equipped with new ideas and a stronger commitment to caring for creation in their work and communities.

This year, A Rocha International hopes to raise £34,000 to continue supporting and coordinating A Rocha’s global EE – ensuring they operate effectively to meet local needs. In 2023, this will include training webinars and a week-long EE conference, contextual material and digital resources, and facilitating EE officers to visit other A Rocha organizations to learn best practices and generate new ideas to apply in their local contexts.

With donations doubled, your gift will have twice the impact. Thank you for joining in with us!

Donate now

* Please note that only donations made through our campaign page on the Christmas Challenge website between 29 November and 6 December are eligible to be doubled.

13. Conservation in action, Nurdle hunt with Env. club members, Monicah Njambi, A Rocha Kenya

The Big Give Christmas Challenge 2021 is open!

Double my donation!

From noon (GMT) on #GivingTuesday 30 November until noon on 7 December any donation you make through the Big Give’s Christmas Challenge website will be doubled (while match funds last) by generous donors and the Big Give’s philanthropic partner, the Reed Foundation.

Our involvement last year enabled A Rocha International to raise over £31,000 towards our global environmental education activities. Your support has helped to equip and empower children and communities to live sustainably with the world around them, like these schoolchildren in Uganda …

This year, A Rocha International is taking part in the Christmas Challenge again, during which we’ll be aiming to raise £30,000 to continue this work supporting and coordinating A Rocha’s global environmental education programme. In 2022 we want to:

  • Resource the A Rocha organizations through a series of training webinars and a week-long environmental education conference, including up-to-date information on current environmental concerns and policies;
  • Enable A Rocha’s environmental education officers to share their knowledge, ideas and expertise, particularly around Plastic Free February, supported by contextual material and digital resources;
  • Create a Biodiversity Toolbox that brings together quality materials and highlights examples of good practice; and
  • Provide the training and support needed to ensure A Rocha’s global environmental education activities are operating effectively to meet local needs.

 

With every donation doubled, your gift will have twice the impact.

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Nine years as a refugee in Lebanon

Ibrahim Saffieh arrived in Lebanon with his family in 2012 as refugees fleeing the war in Syria. Initially he managed to find employment slaughtering chickens. Then in 2015, A Rocha Lebanon offered him work, first at our nature park in Qab Elias and more recently at Mekse, helping with practical conservation and site maintenance.

Ibrahim loves the outdoors and is a loyal worker. He can turn his hand to anything that needs to be done on site – from tree planting and pruning to pond maintenance and irrigation. When extra labour is needed, he arranges work for other refugees, paid on a daily basis thanks to Gifts with a Difference, and the generous individuals whose purchases have supported nature-based livelihoods for Syrian refugees.

Ibrahim also grows food for his family on currently unused land and sells any surplus produce for income. His wife, Fatimah, makes wonderful manousheh, a traditional Lebanese flatbread and their youngest son, Mohammad, hopes to follow in her culinary footsteps by learning catering. At 13 years old, he has already left school and works 12-hour days at a nearby sandwich restaurant. Their eldest son, Ahmed, is 20, and is a carpenter living and working in Beirut, while his daughter, Bathoul, is in her final year at school and dreams of going to university.

Gifts with a Difference has made a real and positive impact for refugee families like Ibrahim’s. Thank you for making a difference!