Go green Christmas celebration

Christmas is coming. Christmas trees are everywhere.

In East Sumba, Indonesia, it is easy to find many Christmas trees at churches. But in rural homes, Christmas trees are hard to find. Due to their expensive prices, many families can’t afford a Christmas tree for their home.

To celebrate Christmas, World Vision at East Sumba operational office initiated a Christmas tree creation competition from recycled materials. Besides celebrating Christmas, the use of recycled materials aims to raise East Sumba people’s awareness of “Go Green and Clean” campaign in reducing the amount of plastic garbage.

The competition was welcomed!

Women from various villages collected recycled materials such as biscuit cans, bottles, broken CDs, food and detergent plastic, branches and other items. Their creativity was channeled through this competition. The results were beautiful Christmas trees, as beautiful as those Christmas trees at churches and malls.

The use of recycled materials aims to raise East Sumba people’s awareness of “Go Green and Clean” campaign in reducing the amount of plastic garbage.

Agnes, a mother from Kambajawa village also joined this competition with her friends. By collecting recycled materials that their children got at schools, the mother's group created Christmas tree. The women asked the children to participate by collecting bottles and plastic from the surrounding environment. The result of one week of hard work was a big Christmas tree!

“I’ve never imagined that I could make Christmas tree from recycled materials,” said Agnes. “It is different from others, but by making our own Christmas tree, we learned how to utilise recycled materials and change them into something beautiful."

Through this Christmas project, World Vision's wish is that people especially parents, can utilise the recycled materials and teach their children about how to love the environment. Now, a Christmas tree is no longer expensive.

*Written by Beatrix Mbete, former Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Wahana Visi Indonesia at East Sumba