We are delighted to share a blog written by student Sandithi Nimaya from Lyceum International School Panadura, who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
If I am to summarise my experience in one sentence I would say that working with the environment was a very exciting and joyful experience as we could make a small difference for a start of a great upliftment in mother nature.
Project Overview
Our project is named Blue Green Revolution as we want to make as many water bodies in our area crystal clear and our area rich in greenery. We noticed that many people tend to litter the beach which in turn harms many of the sea life.
As a solution to this problem we chose the Panadura beach and started to clean the beach to lend a hand to keep the beach free of garbage and to help the marine life survive. We were able to complete our project successfully. We also noticed that some people in our area don’t really care about growing trees. As a solution for this problem we will be starting to promote planting and maintaining trees in our school. All the grades will be given a green corner in the school gardens in which they will learn how to maintain fruit, vegetable and flower plants. This way they would learn the benefits of blue green revolution while enjoying themselves.
We have also noticed that people use huge amounts of polythene and plastic in their day to day life. So we decided to have a exhibition of items we made using waste material to promote the theme “upcycling” around the community so that we can eradicate the use of harmful products in our area.
Our intention is to introduce many more ecological substitutions to our community to help in eradicating as many harmful products. We are concerned about the land, water and air, we are extremely grateful for mother nature. Even though we are stuck in our homes at this time due to the outbreak of the Covid – 19 pandemic we have already started planting trees in our home gardens as a service to our mother nature. It gives us the every breath we inhale enabling us to survive, we have a noble duty to perform.
Our Journey
I am extremely happy that I am able to lead my team and participate in the 2020 GSL Gobal Goals Competition. Participating in this competition helped me identify many skills and abilities which I didn’t know I had within me. During this project I identified skills like;
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- Working towards a target
- Determination
- Learning to balance my school work, extra curricular activities and my project work
- I also learned to look at the environment in a different way
- Organizing skills
- Co-ordination with team members and the community
- Presentation skills and communication skills
Above all I felt happy that I was able to help my country in some way.
Just like the other countries my country also has become a victim of the Covid – 19 disease this resulted us in being locked up in our houses. Our project had to come to a sudden stop but we will be commencing our project work as soon as our school reopens.
The Next Chapter
I would like to continue our project, Blue Green Revolution by doing tree plantation campaigns (giving trees to the poor people in our country), organizing beach cleaning sessions. I would like to be an environmental friendly leader to help many people and animals on both land and in the sea, who are in difficulty. We would like to take our project to the society and next to our country while getting other people in our country involved in many eco friendly activities. I would also like to launch a website featuring our project and our ideas to raise awareness of many people worldwide.
The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
