10 000 children for a forest

1. 10 000 children for a forest Our school’sproject for a greener Europe

2. A cooperationbetweenDecines’ townhall and the schools Décines ‘ townhalloffers to eachchild of 4th year of primaryschool( 9-10 yearsold) to plant a treeeveryyear. The projectaims at clearing a former rubbish tip locatednear a natural parc close to ourtown and sensibilize the children to the protection of ourenvironment. The projectstarted in 2001, itwill last for 20 years. Eachyear, as 500 children(aged 9-10) are going to ourtown’ s primaryschool, thatmeansthat 10000 treeswillbeplantedwithin 2021.

3. Each year, it takes 3 steps for the project  : • 1/ A forest ranger, goes into classes to introduce the projectto the children. He also introduces his work , he explains how important it is to protect our forest and why a tree is a living organism • 2/ The children do trees planting in November. They also get a little pot with a tree seed that they can bring back home. • 3/At the end of the school year, the children and the forest ranger go and visit a real forest.

4. The seedings : The forest ranger gave us wild cherry tree seeds and we have put it into a small pot, we took it home and could plant it in our garden.

5. The plantings : First, the townhall gardeners have weeded the ground . We have made a hole and have put some fertiliser in it. Thenwe have planted our little tree , put the ground back and compacted it. Thenwe have put some nets in order to protect the plants from the rodents.

6. We have planted leafy trees : rowan , alder, maple, oak, birch, wild cherry and hazel trees. Each tree has our name written on a label and is indexed so that we can find it on a map thank to a GPS location. • Wefeelresponsible for ourtrees, • Wefeelresponsible for the protection of ourenvironment!