Lemon Tree Trust and DoLSA bring environmental workshops to children in Gawilan camp

Girls and boys living in Gawilan refugee camp have come together for child-focused environmental workshops at the Hêvî Community Garden, brought to life by Lemon Tree Trust and the General Directorate of Social Care in Duhok (DoLSA).

The workshops form part of the Child Protection and Climate Change Campaign, through which UNICEF supports DoLSA in empowering children and strengthening their role in environmental protection.

On the day, the children took part in hands-on sessions exploring how they can expand green spaces and shape their surroundings, using waste materials such as old vehicle tyres as planters, to create things that beautify and protect their local environment. They also toured the Hêvî Community Garden, helping to plant seedlings, water the raised growing beds and learn how to care for plants.

As a group they discussed the shared responsibility all children carry for the environment around them and their communities. One girl took the lead, reading the campaign’s brochure aloud to her peers and encouraging them to carry its message of environmental protection home to their families.

At the end of the day, Lemon Tree Trust gave each child a seedling, all grown in the Hêvî polytunnels, to take home and plant.

Othman Qewas, Hêvî Community Garden manager, said: “Children in this camp grow up with very little green space around them. Activities like this give them practical knowledge about why plants and trees matter and what they can do to improve their environment, starting at home and in the streets around them.”

This activity builds on Lemon Tree Trust’s ongoing work with children in Gawilan camp this spring. Othman recently visited all five primary schools in the camp, distributing pomegranate, fig, grape and hopbush trees alongside rose, rosemary and snapdragon seedlings to 124 pupils. School visits to the Hêvî Community Garden are planned for the new academic year.

Gawilan is a dense, city-like settlement with little greenery, where shade is scarce and outdoor space is limited. Home to 11,542 Syrian refugees – more than half of them children – many having fled the war in northeast Syria, it is a place where green space is almost entirely absent. The Hêvî Community Garden exists to address that directly and for children growing up there, a working garden and a seedling to take home and tend matters.

Help us reach more children

To keep growing and sharing them across camps and communities in the Kurdistan Region, we need your support.

This spring we are raising funds to grow and distribute thousands of trees and plants across refugee and IDP (internally displaced people) camps. Our target is £30,000 GBP / $39,500 USD.

Every donation is currently being matched, meaning your gift goes twice as far.

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