The Jamaican Ministry of Tourism and its public bodies successfully concluded TAW (Tourism Awareness Week) with the final instalment of the island wide school speaking engagements and tree planting exercises at the Mannings School.
The aim was to highlight the 2023 UNWTO World Tourism Day’s ‘Tourism and Green Investments’ theme, where the Tourism Ministry and its partners planted over 100 trees in schools across the island. Schools including Manchester High, Titchfield High, Sam Sharpe Teacher’s College, Iona High, and Excelsior High saw Tourism Enhancement Fund’s (TEF) Executive Director, Dr Carey Wallace spearheading the tree-planting ceremony at the Mannings School, supported by Junior Minister of Tourism, Deja Bremmer; Acting Principal of Mannings, Mrs. Sharon Thorpe - with other MOT executives, as well as the Forestry Department, addressing students on caring for the plants.
Speaking to 5th and 6th formers at the event, Mrs. Thorpe said: “Without trees we can’t survive. We need oxygen, and it means then that when you plant a tree, when you preserve the environment, you are in fact preserving your life”.
Dr Wallace added: “You develop the industry so that you can earn from it, provide jobs, provide opportunities and pull wealth into the country for the people to live a good quality of life”. He told the students that they should direct think about converting Jamaica’s assets into wealth creating for the people and that the TEF (Tourism Enhancement Fund) was engaged in determining “how can we make you more equipped, more skilled, with more resources to make tourism better and to make more from it for everyone.”
Encouraging greater involvement from the students through a variety of TEF initiatives, and its subsidiaries, Dr Wallace went on to say: “My charge to you in wrapping up Tourism Awareness Week is that we have an amazing country, we have amazing potential, we have you the amazing young people; let us all pull it together, collaborate and let us make this Jamaica, land we love, a resounding success of a story”.
