Lifen promotes recycling to protect nature

Huang Lifen draws a picture on the beach at Chengmai, Hainan Island.
© UNICEF/China/2025/Ma Yuyuan

Early in the morning, 18-year-old graphic design student Huang Lifen walks down a beach at Chengmai on the north coast of Hainan Island, China, with a sketchpad under her arm. The sound of the waves can be heard, rolling gently to the shore. It’s a beautiful sweep of sand but, as she looks out to sea, the horizon is lost in the haze. Lifen walks towards the top of the beach, where she starts finding rubbish left behind by tourists the day before or washed up from the sea.

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Cao Kun saves water to help protect the planet

Cao Kun adjusts a passion fruit vine on the trellis he made from recycled bed frames.
©UNICEF/China/2025/Ma Yuyuan

Cao Kun walks up the hillside from a small lake to his family farm in Chengmai, a rural area of China’s southern Hainan Island. It’s sunset and the air is filled with the sounds of birds and crickets. A white egret flies across the sky from the marshland. Cao Kun pushes aside the leaves of a tall maize plant and follows the winding earth path in the fading light. He turns to look back across the valley.

“When I was a boy, this lake was much larger and had lots of fish in it,” he recalls. “But there was a very severe drought a few years ago. The lake became so dry that only the central part had some water left. The mud at the bottom of the lake dried up and cracked because of the sun.”

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Young people get a head start in the fish industry

Fisherman Nicholas adjusts the net on one of his floating fish cages in Lake Victoria
© UNICEF Kenya/2023/Paul Kidero

This story first appeared in the Star newspaper.

The waters of Lake Victoria are calm off Dunga beach, Kisumu, as young entrepreneur Vincent and fisherman Nicholas climb into a wooden boat and head out to check on their fish. Storks perch on rocks emerging from the water along the lakeside, while further out white-sailed dhow boats cut across the breeze. “It’s calm now but, in a few hours, it will be very choppy,” Nicholas observes.

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Young people invent an award-winning eco-toilet

Farmer John Ochieng, 77, adds Saniwise manure to a field in his farm in Kisumu
© UNICEF Kenya/2023/Paul Kidero

It’s a hot and humid morning on John Ochieng’s farm on the outskirts of Kisumu town, near a small lagoon. John is a bright and healthy 77-year-old who strides through the fields in bare feet, some of his toenails missing after decades of labour. He enjoys practicing his English. “How are you coping with the atmospheric pressure this morning?” he asks UNICEF, with a twinkle in his eyes.

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