Nadia Ben Sellam
Journalist, Writer and Thinker, Morocco 

World Environment Day maybe 5 days a week, 20 a month, and probably 200 an academic year. The primary school gardening class in the past was a talented idea! We were taught in the school-back garden that scholastic achievement goes hand in hand with taking care of the Only One Garden we share with all the schoolmates, aged 6 to 12 years old. A school gardener taught us to appreciate its soil, its worms, its insects, its plants, and its trees. We did, because we were allowed to take part in every gardening act until grains came out of the magic dirt we touched with our small hands, with a small harvest not meant to feed us! That is how we came to understand that if we sincerely manage our small green environment around us with respect and humility, we get the shade of its trees, the singing of its birds, and the colors of its flowers. And the cherry on the cake: earn extra points! 


From the height of our middle childhood, absorbed in simple gardening acts in the small school-back garden we were not yet aware that we have #OnlyOneEarth, but we were sure it is alive and generous, loves those who love it, and lavishes on those who take care of it. 

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