Nairobi, Kenya – June 6, 2025
In celebration of World Environment Day, WePlanet Africa teamed up with Sports for Greener Environment and the Kahawa Pride FC Lionesses to host a football-themed climate action event at Kiwanja Primary School in Nairobi. The goal? To turn the pitch into a platform for building climate awareness and sparking behavior change among young players through storytelling, hands-on learning, and the 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
The day kicked off with an interactive learning session where students explored the science behind climate change and how it affects their everyday lives. WePlanet Africa’s Peter Gichuki delivered a memorable “Team Earth” talk, creatively using football metaphors to explain complex climate issues. Greenhouse gases were likened to an invisible opponent disrupting the game, just as a team cannot perform on a broken pitch, humanity cannot thrive on a damaged planet.
Football lingo helped translate big ideas like deforestation and pollution into concepts the youth could easily grasp. Trees were framed as the planet’s defenders, while the 3Rs became their environmental playbook:
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- Reducing single-use plastics was compared to strategic positioning — avoiding trouble before it starts.
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- Reusing items was a smart tactical shift.
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- Recycling became the clean pass — giving waste a second chance to score.
After the talk, students and organizers rolled up their sleeves to clear an overgrown section of the school grounds. The hands-on activity reinforced the day’s message: small, local actions can drive long-term environmental impact.
The players made personal commitments, from bringing reusable water bottles to training to saying no to plastic packaging and proper waste disposal. At the end of the day, each participant recognized themselves not just as footballers, but as defenders of nature on “Team Earth.”