Pupils at Overleigh St Marys’ CE Primary School were delighted to receive photos from their twin school in Uganda.

Overleigh has been been working with Rubuguri Primary school on a twinning project to plant trees in the Kisoro district of Uganda, near to the home of the mountain gorillas.

Both schools are part of the Great Ape Film Initiative (GAFI) twinning scheme, which allows children in the UK and overseas to discover more about the conservation of Great Apes through the use of pedal powered cinemas and educational twinning projects.

Fewer than 900 Mountain gorillas remain in the wild and populations are under threat from habitat loss often caused by local communities burning wood and cutting timber. Environmental films produced by the GAFI project show local people the importance of protecting their environment and school tree planting schemes help to replenish forest areas for the gorillas and other primates.

Pupils at Rubuguri Primary in Uganda

Ten schools in the Cheshire area are currently working on twinning projects and the tree planting initiative is just one of the many projects.

Earlier this year, parents and children from Overleigh St. Mary’s CE Primary sent money over to Uganda to plant trees in lieu of Easter eggs.

Denis Agaba, from GAFI Uganda, who is coordinating the project said: “Tree planting was a great day at Rubuguri, we planted 320 fruit trees together with children, teachers and some parents on the PTA committee.

“The trees we planted included guava, oranges, jerk fruits, avocados, mangoes, tomato fruits and passion fruits. This marks phase one of planting and we look forward to planting more trees in the next few weeks. All the children and teachers have been really excited by the idea and we hope more schools will become involved.”

To find out more about the GAFI project www.gafi4apes.org