Singapore School Manila, Philippines |

For a cleaner and clearer future

We are delighted to share a blog written by team ProH2O, students at Singapore School Manila who are part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.

Their project is among over 800 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. 

Working alongside people who have the same heart for an important cause like this empowers us to rise up against water pollution, starting with water bodies in our community, to progress into achieving a global impact that strives for a cleaner and clearer future.

Project Overview

Our country’s water bodies have been suffering from steady degradation and pollution problem has now exploded! With increasing amounts of trash that continue to drastically contribute to water pollution, the president of the Philippines closed Boracay in 2018 for a period of 6 months for rehabilitation and now the government is focusing on rehabilitating Manila Bay. With our project, ProH2O, we wanted to do our bit to help reduce water pollution in our local community. ProH2O is a project that focuses on certain bodies of water in our local community that are contaminated with trash and aims to host cleanups with the aid of donations and volunteers.

We hope to raise enough funds and gather the most help to raise awareness about a problem that especially resonates in the Philippines.

We recently had a workshop in collaboration with the Asian Social Institute on making Mabuhay balls or Bokashi balls. This a technology from Japan, which uses beneficial micro-organisms to break down toxins. These balls are composed of clay soil, microorganisms, and Mabuhay mix- a mix of rice bran, sugar, salt to name a few. During the workshop, with the help of our SSM student volunteers, we made around 1800 balls. These balls are now been fermented. After fermentation, these balls will be dropped in the contaminated water body in our community. We already have secured permission from our local city management for our proposed clean-up. The Mabuhay balls have been proven to clean waterways!

Our Journey

As a group of 7 students from Singapore School Manila, we have not only learnt from one another, but also have learnt a lot from the people who have helped and contributed to the ProH2O community. During our journey so far, we have gained knowledge about hosting coastal cleanups, learn how bodies of water are purified, possible ways of raising awareness and many more.

Joining the GSL Global Social Leaders Competition, we faced some challenges like needing a lot of volunteers to create the Mabuhay balls, to get the go signal to clean the canal from ASEANA, our local city management, looking for sponsors, and many more. Though we faced a lot of challenges, our group was able to tackle those by keeping our goals SMART, Specific, Measurable, Assignable/Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, and time specific. We know that a journey of thousand miles begins with a single step and that’s how we deal with our challenges, one at a time. There are many more things on what our group would have to work on, but know that in the process we all will grow as individuals and as a group.

Being part of the GSL helped us individually learn that though we are a small group of young people wanting to have change in the world for the better, we still can contribute to this great cause by doing our bit, taking actions as social leaders.

The Next Chapter

In the future, we plan to further continue this project with other water bodies in our community with the help of more and more supporters. We hope this movement can shine a brighter light on water pollution so more people can be aware of the issue. Our impact may be small now, but with persistence and commitment, we will surely be able to have sustained progress on our goal.

Through the course of this project, we have been able to grow as a team by collaborating and working together. Though looking for sponsorships was challenging, we were determined to succeed. And with persistence, we did manage to get sponsorships for our Mabuhay Balls workshop. Now, we must find the source of the pollutants to be able to prevent the pollution from happening again and find a sustainable solution for at least this water body. Though more problems may emerge, we aspire to keep on going.

The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. 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.