Young Christian Students (YCS) at the University of Zimbabwe embarked on an environmental clean-up and awareness campaign in areas around the university in a bid to reduce the rate of littering and advocate for environmental care on the 23rd of April.

About thirty members from Zimbabwe Young Christian Students, Joshualites and the Catholic Society at University of Zimbabwe participated in the event.

The Catholic students group managed to pick up litter from the streets and made efforts unblock some water drainages which were blocked by piles of plastics, metal cans and also plastic containers of various products.

Following the campaign to clean up the streets, the group managed to place three rubbish bins cemented on slabs donated by the National Movement of Catholic Students (NMCS).

YCS UZ Chairperson, Miss Polite Magadza, said the group’s action was aimed at raising awareness of men’s responsibility in maintaining the environment and to correct and exemplify how much students and the community need to keep the environment clean.

“We need to correct our past errors as students and proactively prevent further pollution of our environment,” she urged the students.

She appealed to all organizations with capacity to come in and support similar student campaigns which require a lot of material, information and financial aid for them to be successful and sustainable and to everyone to make the cleanliness of the environment their responsibility.

The campaign, is one of the group’s action plans for the semester following a series of discussions on the topical environment and climate change issues and also the calls by Pope Francis in his Encyclical, Laudato Si-On care of our common home.