By Clifford Akumu
As the world marks the World Environmental Day themed on Beat Plastic Pollution, Greenpeace Africa has launched an online campaign platform to net the ordinary citizen’s voices to run environmental petitions for a healthier continent.
The online campaign, VUMA.EARTH that coincided with this year’s Day on Environment
seeks to grow an environmental movement and give a voice to the many voiceless Africans across the continent who are always left behind in the fight against environmental degradation.
The tool will provide a space for Africans to start campaigns that address environmental
issues affecting their local communities “It is important for African people to stand up against the abuse of the environment because it is our heritage at stake. VUMA.EARTH is a tool to help facilitate this,” said Angelo Louw, the Greenpeace Africa Digital Mobilisation Officer.
VUMA.EARTH is a full-online campaign management tool that allows users to set up petitions, easily communicate with supporters and set up offline events. A particularly useful function on the platform, within the rural African context, is the ability to capture signatures offline for later use.
To garner momentum for this platform, Greenpeace Africa is calling on supporters to support the platform by choosing a cause they care about, signing and sharing on social media sites and also tagging friends.
“Many people think it is hard to get involved in protecting the environment because they feel they can only do that by showing up at protests and clean-ups, while it would be amazing for people to commit to environmentalism at that level, taking a stand for the environmental by signing and sharing the petition online” said Angelo.
Although Kenya boasts of an impressive record in plastic pollution war experts agree that the country still needs to do more especially towards the management of plastic waste as UN predicts by the year 2050, there will be more plastics in our Oceans than fish.
