Louise Gray reports from Sri Lanka, where she spent three months raising the profile of a tree conservation charity.
INTRODUCING Miss Looweee Grayee, a most enthusiastic working lady from around the world!” It sounded like something out of Moulin Rouge, except this was far less glamorous. Out of the blue, I’d been asked to address a rural school in southern Sri Lan
ka as part of my job raising awareness for a tree conservation society.
I gingerly took the microphone and stared at the audience. Almost 400 curious faces stared back. “Um, thank you for inviting me to your school, you have a beautiful country largely because of the trees. It is up to you to protect them…”
I spoke for a few minutes about the role of trees in tackling global warming and then sat down with very clammy palms to polite applause. It was a rather embarrassing moment but technically my introduction was correct. I was working in Sri Lanka for three months as communications adviser to Ruk Rakaganno, the tree society of Sri Lanka. The charity aims to protect biodiversity by protecting endangered forest and planting more trees. Although my skills as a journalist came in useful, it was mostly dogged enthusiasm that allowed me to achieve anything over such a short period. I managed to get articles published in Sri Lankan publications and international websites about the importance of planting trees and wrote up an information sheet for corporations interested in funding future projects with the charity. I also learned about Sri Lanka, shared experiences of Scotland and left behind some tools to use for publicity in the long term.
While I cannot claim to have turned around the fortunes of Ruk Raks, as they are affectionately known, I certainly helped raise awareness of the charity in a short time.
It wasn’t all easy. At first it was a struggle to understand how the charity worked, but as a journalist I am used to getting information out of people and found it relatively easy to place articles in Sri Lankan newspapers. I also wrote a blog for a national UK newspaper, which not only raised awareness of Ruk Raks abroad but a little money to give to the charity at the end of my stay.
The highlight for me was the week I spent in the field visiting schools and home gardening projects in the tsunami-hit areas south of the country. Ruk Raks teach children about biodiversity in the hope the next generation will take better care of the environment. The home gardening programme is designed to help women in tsunami resettlements to establish gardens where they can grow food for their family.
The most difficult part of working for Ruk Raks was trying to achieve something beyond my own skills. Although I was able to raise publicity in the English-speaking press, Ruk Raks need to be better able to communicate what they do to corporations ready to fund environmental projects – especially tree-planting. I put together a fact sheet for corporations but didn’t have the time or experience necessary to build a website or a presentation. Hopefully that’s something Ruk Raks will do in future.
In the long term, my work is sustainable as the articles I wrote can be used for publicity for years to come. Also the contacts, photographs and fact sheets will come in useful in the continual improvement of the organisation. I will be keeping in touch with Ruk Raks and as an “honorary member” hope to help them from home.
It was most auspicious that after three months working for Ruk Raks, my last trip was to visit the country’s most famous tree, the sacred Bo tree – taken from a cutting of the tree where Buddha gained enlightenment. Standing underneath it the weekend before I left I asked myself whether I could really claim to have done anything for trees in Sri Lanka? Ruk Raks simply do not have the staff to continue firing off press releases, updating the website or writing brochuresbut the nature of publicity is to establish the name of an organisation in people’s minds in the long term. Hopefully the contacts, articles and reports I put together will come in useful in gaining funding for Ruk Raks in the future.
Unfortunately the biggest problem Sri Lanka faces at the moment is the ongoing civil war. It makes saving trees seem trivial – yet one of the most important things Sri Lanka taught me was how seriously other countries take the environment.
It is easy to assume that we in the developed world care more about such things because we have the time and resources. Yet recent surveys have shown this is not the case. It is countries such as Sri Lanka, with its beautiful forests and high levels of biodiversity, that have so much to lose. It is organisations, like Ruk Raks, fighting to plant more trees not only to slow climate change but also maintain biodiversity when the world warms up, that are trying to protect the environment for future generations.
• Louise Gray, a former Scotsman journalist, spent three months as communications advisor for Ruk Rakaganno, the Tree Society of Sri Lanka.
rukrakaganno.sacredcat.org The placement was organised through Edinburgh charity Challenges Worldwide
www.challengesworldwide.comThe full article contains 894 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
