UN Malawi says Lake of Stars Discovery the cleanest festival ever!

UN Malawi has said the recently held Lake of Stars Discovery is the cleanest festival ever, thanks to the organizers for stepping up efforts on environmental conservation to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Under the harshtags #NoPlasticChallenge, #ClimateChangeMw and #Youth4ChangeMw, UN Malawi conducted a waste management competition throughout the festival.

To enter, one had to visit the Climate Action photo booth and take a picture depicting how they are innovatively inspired not to use single use plastics at the festival or carry a Climate Action placard and share on social media tagging UN Malawi.

The post with many likes, shares and retweets emerged victorious.

Dancehall artist Malinga Mafia got the first prize, Samsung Galaxy A20 phone, with over 880 likes on his posts.

Runner ups included Phinduzaie, Kim of Diamonds, Thandie and Deborah.

Taking it to social media, UN Country Resident Coordinator Maria Jose Torres said festivals like Lake of Stars offer moments to realise people are one living on one planet which requires all our actions to protect it.

“ArtGlo coming light up the LoS engaging Youth in action. So inspiring. Walking the talk in LoS: The cleanest festival ever,” Torres said.

Prior to the official festival, Lake of Stars held the third edition of Day Of Ideas delivered in partnership with European Union and other partners to use the infrastructure of the festival to benefit the youth of the local community with a day of interactive educational activities.

For the first time Day Of Ideas centred on a single theme, the urgent issue of climate change aiming at young people to discover and reflect on issues involved in an interesting and interactive way.

Workshops and exhibitions included Sunny Money, who will be setting up a solar library at the local primary school, interactive environmental theatre from ArtGlo, a musical workshop from Conservation Music, tree planting with Root2Fruit, and the EU’s own Afikepo programme.

The EU’s Climate Change Champion, Luwayo Biswick conducted workshops with students in local communities, learning practical environmental sustainable skills.

Over 300 youths from schools around the area participated in waste management as well as environment and climate change summits.

The youthful students were drawn from Kachere, Chiomba, Kazanda Primary Schools (Standard 6 and above) and Kapanda Secondary.