The Gambia will participate in world clean-up day on Saturday, and millions of people in over 150 countries will stand up against global waste pollution by clean up communities, parks, forests, and beaches.
According to a statement made available to The Voice on Thursday by HELP-Gambia and Let’s Do It Gambia in partnership with National Youth Council, thousands of communities will act together as once, creating a powerful ‘green wave’ of cleanups spanning from New Zealand to Hawaii and will last for 36 hours.
World Cleanup Day is organised by Let’s Do It World (LDIW) – a global movement that supports and connects a new generation of community leaders, who are ready to act together to find lasting solutions for the waste problem in their countries.
Hosted in The Gambia by HELP-Gambia, Let’s Do It Gambia in partnership with National Youth Council – The Gambia, will participate in removing trash scattered around public facilities, including market areas, health centres, schools, highways, and neighbourhoods.
The statement revealed that this historic civic engagement inspires over 100,000 volunteers from Banjul to Basse in Upper River Region of the Gambia about 460 km out of Banjul.
All groups are enthusiastic about participating in cleansing the country’s immediate and biophysical environment.
As we approach the exercise with overwhelming excitement, the Country Leader for World Cleanup Day in The Gambia, Nfamara K. Dampha said: “World Cleanup is not only a sweeper and a ground breaker but a unifier of people from diverse backgrounds against trash and climate change impacts #KeepItClean.”
“Cleaning beaches and public areas sounds like something that has been done before. Our mission is not just about cleaning but about actually stopping this problem once and for all.
“Humans are the only species who have managed to generate something that cannot be used by the rest of the ecosystem – waste. 80% of the plastic that floats today in our oceans has come from land, so we need to start there, working hand-in-hand with local communities,” Heidi Solba, President and Head of Network of the Let’s Do It World, explained.
He added: “The overall goal of World CleanUp Day is not only to pick up waste, but to also raise awareness of the severity of the global climate crisis, drive behaviour changes, and encourage companies, organisations, and governments to adopt more sustainable environmental policies.”