"Teenagers across the World, Unite to Protect the Earth!" an 11-year old Chinese girl made the appeal in Beijing on November 29 to an international meeting on ozone layer protection.

The exhortation was made by Zhang Yijing, a girl from the Chongwen Primary School in Beijing, on behalf of teenagers from 200 "hand-in-hand global villages" across China.

The villages were set up three years ago by Chinese teenagers for environmental protection and poverty relief in primary and middle schools and they are managed by the students themselves.

"We found that the Earth is sick following our investigation into the status of environmental protection. There is also a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica," Zhang told nearly 1,000 representatives from some 180 countries, regions, and organizations worldwide.

"We would like to make our own contributions to the cause of environmental protection with our little hands, while leading experts gathered here to discuss big matters to patch the sky," meaning repair the damaged ozone layer, the hole over Antarctica.

According to the students' six-point initiative, teenagers across the world should make their own efforts to protect the Earth by spreading ozone protection information among their families, classmates, and community.

She said teenagers should also persuade their parents to buy environment-friendly products.

Zhang asked the "ladies and gentlemen" at the 11th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete Ozone to join her initiative so as to "save the Earth and leave a blue sky, clean water, and fresh air to our future generations."

Members from the "hand-in-hand global villages" have helped build one primary school for poor kids in a poor Chinese province with 200,000 yuan (about 35,000 US dollars) they earned from the sale of recyclable materials they collected.

Her initiative won the applause of the participants.

Madhava Sarma, chairman of the meeting and executive secretary of the Secretariat for the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol, described the initiative as excellent and offered to recommend it publication overseas.