Fifty GAA players have travelled to Africa to help kick-start a bid to plant more than one million trees to combat climate change.
Among those who made the trip to Nairobi in Kenya were Antrim players Chris Kerr, Jane Adams, Paddy Burke, and Neil McManus.
Those taking part in the first ever `Plant the Planet Games' helped plant the first 1,000 trees.
Each of the participating players, who included inter-county hurlers, footballers and camogie players, from 23 different counties, were tasked with raising €10,000 in sponsorship to support the effort.
The group’s collective total has already topped half-a-million Euros, with funds still coming in.
Among the other participants were Limerick's Sean Finn, Wexford’s Matthew O’Hanlon, Kerry’s Stefan Okunbor, Clare’s Podge Collins, Kilkenny’s Grace Walsh, and Niamh O’Sullivan from Meath.
The players also took to the field for a series of exhibition games at Nairobi Rugby Club, before visiting projects being implemented by Self Help Africa in Kenya, and planting trees at Baringo in the country’s drought affected Rift Valley.
The initiative was organised by Galway dual player Alan Kerins and is being supported by Kenyan Olympic medallist and world record holding runner, David Rudisha.
Martha Hourican, Business Development Director at Self Help Africa, said the support provided by the Gaelic players would have a transformational effect for communities in Kenya.
"Regions of Kenya have endured four successive years of drought, upwards of two million livestock have been lost this year alone, and crops have failed," she said.
"This trip responds to that crisis in a practical way, while also highlighting for people back home here across Ireland very real effects of climate change being felt by poor and vulnerable communities in Africa,” she said.
Further information about Self Help Africa’s efforts to plant millions of trees in Africa is available at www.selfhelpafrica.org
