On Sunday the 1st March 2020 over 700 competitors ran in the fifth Colegio Bolivar 5K Verde Run. This event brings together all members of our community in a fun, for some a grueling, 5K run around the school and surrounding area. The run also is a catalyst for planting trees for our city, Cali, to re-forest and regenerate natural areas, increasing the biodiversity and raising awareness of the need of trees in our urban, peri-urban and rural environments.
This year the school asked the Bolivar Garden to be directly involved in raising awareness and encouraging people to plant trees. Luckily the garden already had some 47 coffee trees ready to plant. However to make a greater impact and follow up on some ideas that Bolivar Garden Volunteers had, we also purchased 28 cacao trees and were very kindly donated five fruit trees by Vivero Pasoancho, in Ciudad Jardin, together with 10 sacks of prime organic earth.
Two weeks before the event, students and teachers in the agriculture class, plus Hugo Guerrero our custodian in the garden, other teachers and their classes (a big thank you to the 10th grade PE classes and Piedad Douglas and Cristian Romero for their assistance), and a Bolivar Garden weekend crew, dug 70 holes, mixed earth, organised shovels and other equipment. and laid out plants next to the holes for planting.
Diego Narvaez helped with producing signs and a new poster explaining the development of Don Simón, that came from student and teacher ideas.
On the day Alejandro Guasto and Juan Jose Gomez made a stand with our first production of Don Simón coffee for runners, and to explain how far we had got with the coffee plantation.
This preparatory work was hard but rewarding. On the day, seeing families, students, teachers and others planting trees, and learning that there is a garden and what we do was a tremendous boost.
Read the following article from the Colegio Bolivar that goes into more detail about the planting on the day!
https://temporal.colegiobolivar.edu.co/magazine/en/community-news/shout-si-si-si-plant-a-tree