Don Bosco Green Alliance, Cambodia — The governor of Kep Province, H.E. Som Piseth, visited Don Bosco Kep on the morning of 29th August 2024 to open officially the special program “Five Thousand Trees” created by the Don Bosco Green Alliance Cambodian Branch in Kep, one of the greenest provinces of Cambodia at the coastal region.

Kep, although the smallest province of the Southeast Asian kingdom with an area of 336 km2 (130 sq mi), is made of a discrete peninsula of 8 km from north to southwest and a big share of the Phnom Voar (Voar Mountains) at the north, shared with the surrounded province of Kampot. In such a small territory, called by some as the “Cambodian Monaco,” Kep includes hills, caves, beaches, mangroves, pagodas on natural settings, salt fields and even a peninsula of 13 islands and islets. Its population of 50 thousand people is dedicated to agriculture, fishing and tourism. Kep is also in the Cambodian development plans to make it an eco-friendly-tourism spot with the creation of structures such as the Funan Techo Canal that would connect by water the Cambodian sea in Kep with the Phnom Penh River Autonomous Port in a project described as the Tonle Bassac Navigation Road and Logistic System project of 180 km from the Cambodian capital to the Gulf of Thailand.

In this context, the preservation of the multiple ecosystems of this wonderful territory is vital to guarantee the future of sustainable development and the contribution to the global challenges of climate and fight against poverty and inequality. Don Bosco Kep, as an organization at the service of the Cambodian communities through education of children and young people from rural and indigenous areas since 2011, has put environment and social work as the guiding principles inside the Salesian preventive system philosophy. With the Don Bosco Brother Sun program, the Don Bosco Kep campus has been thought as an oasis of tolerance and harmony between students from different religions and cultures, while allowing the jungles between hills and the sea to meet in biodiversity.

The Five Thousand Trees Planting Program has been presented in a such a way that the students and teachers could bring life to their own families and villages. “Bringing the forest beyond, to our own daily life,” is the main motif of the program that has found the ears of H.E. Som Piseth as governor of Kep Province and the department of environmental led by Mr. In Sao and the authorities and organized communities of Kep Province. The local government decided to donate to the program the 5 thousand saplings in such a way that every student and teacher receives 10 saplings to plant in their villages.

The Jarai 1st year student of IT department, Mr. Thvinh Sarl, was chosen by the Don Bosco Green Alliance Cambodia to make a speech in the name of the community in order to thanks the support by H.E. Som Piseth. As indigenous youth from Ratanakiri, Thvinh said that it is important that we all join together to protect the environment, as well as the indigenous and rural wisdom of the Cambodians in this moment of climate change.

Fr. Ly Samnang (Albeiro Rodas) reminded about the process of Don Bosco Kep as a place where education, training and environment came together. “We, Cambodians, can do it too, we are descendants of brave Cambodian ancestors, the building of wonderful temples, we can revive also our forests, that are also sacred temples of Mother Earth,” he pointed out.

H.E. Som Piseth directed the academic community, underlining the importance of the environment as a place where the communities come together to protect life. “We are also part of the environment, and we need to look for ways to preserve nature,” he said. His Excellency planted also a tree in the Don Bosco Campus, near to the old tree planted years ago by the former Kep province governor H.E. Khem Satha.