A staffer from shopping center's security department with watermelons produced in Ezdan Mall's outdoor kitchen garden.
As Sustainability Week is being marked in Qatar with a number of green activities, there is a shopping mall in the town that not only sells vegetables in its hypermarket but also grows (though symbolically) some of them at its kitchen garden.
The outdoor kitchen garden has been divided into various parts; each part assigned to various departments of the mall like security, facilities, customer services etc. Now the mall management calls security as “securi-Tree” and facility as “facili-Tree”.
And this shopping centre is Ezdan Mall. The mall is also running a campaign “Green Dream 2022” aimed at planting 22 million plants by Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup. The parking areas of almost all malls serve the motorists alone for parking purposes but Ezdan Mall’s parking-lot is also providing a base to spread the message of love with environment and nature.
Vertical gardens, recycled benches, plant seeds and saplings, green tutors, pictures of Qatar’s flora and smiling-faced security personnel are there entertaining residents with professional guidance on how to grow plants and why to love them. Almost on a daily basis, (during weekdays), kids from various schools visit the mall and leave the “Green Academy” with deep love for flora.
“I have attached all of my hopes to the children. They are our future,” says Malik Qaiser Awan, the Group GM Ezdan Malls, the man who conceived Green Dream 2022 few years ago.
“We imported fruit and vegetable saplings from Switzerland and here at the mall we started kindling love for environment and greenery in the hearts of school students in particular and community in general.”
On the outdoor garden, Awan said: “Different departments of the mall have been assigned patches of land in the dedicated kitchen garden area. Now our security is securi-Tree and facility as facili-Tree.”
Today, under Ezdan Mall’s “Fourth Community Immersion Project”, the mall employees are going to the students of Sherborn International School on their school’s green day. The event has been named as “Green Day”.
With notable Qatari environmentalist Dr Saif Ali Al Hajari, Ezdan Mall is set to launch a big environmental initiative for which the mall has already committed QR500,000.
Talking to The Peninsula, Maria, a green tutor, who actually works in security department, said that they used to teach children how to grow plant seeds in eggshells.
“When the seed grows into a sapling, it is transferred to a relatively bigger pot.”
Another employee of the mall said that there was competition among various departments over the outdoor kitchen garden.
