Impact activity closes this year’s Tourism Festival |04 October 2021
Closing the festivities for the Tourism Festival this year, children of staff from the Seychelles' Tourism Department joined the Ecosystem Based Adaptation (EBA) project team for a tree-planting activity on Saturday October 2, 2021 at ‘Dan Sours’ at Val D’Andorre, Baie Lazare.
Reinforcing the commitment of the destination to fight against climate change, the school children manifested their enthusiasm and hardiness as, braving a heavy downpour, they helped both teams plant some 200 native species including ‘lantannyen fey’, ‘lantannyen milpat’, ‘lantannyen lat’, ‘sandel’, ‘vakwa’ and ‘lafous’ on the EBA site.
They were led by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tourism, Sylvestre Radegonde; the principal secretary for Tourism, Sherin Francis; the director general for destination marketing, Bernadette Willemin; and the director general for administration and human resource, Jenifer Sinon.
During the event, Minister Radegonde stated that in line with this year's national theme for the festival, the department decided to include young members of the community to be part of the impact activity.
“Children are the future of the industry and our country. It was important for us to include them in the various activities of the festival. I was very pleased to see their enthusiasm to help us dig and plant. It was a great lesson and source of inspiration to all of us present at ‘Dan Sours’,” he said.
Speaking live on local radio ‘Radyo Sesel’, Mrs Francis said that the activity demonstrates the commitment of the department to take actions to reverse the carbon emissions caused by tourism activities.
“Our environment is one of the most important features of our destination. The beauty of our islands depends on our actions to take care of it. This is why we always incorporate a clean-up activity during our Tourism Festival. As an organisation we are determined to walk the talk and this year we added the tree- planting activity to reinforce our commitment towards the offsetting of carbon emissions and preservation of our ecosystems,” affirmed Mrs Francis.
The tree-planting activity closed the 2021 Tourism Festival held under the theme ‘Shaping the future’.
The accompanying photographs show some highlights of the tree-planting activity at ‘Dan Sours’.
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