We are delighted to share a blog written by students Ines, Maxine, Kaiser, Margarita and Ioanna, from Campion School, who are part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2020-21 GSL 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.
Absorbing and terrifying when coming to the realisation of current issues and their affect on our future; but also energising since we have the opportunity to make an impact.
Project Summary
To summarise our project, what we are doing is making a sea turtle sculpture out of plastic, which will be exhibited in our school entrance, in order to impact and educate the most students, parents, and teachers as possible. The sculpture will be made for the primary purpose of raising awareness on these beautiful endangered creatures; as well as plastic pollution affecting our planet and biodiversity more and more every year.
What made us choose this intriguing topic was, on a school trip, we had the privilege of acknowledging the terrible conditions sea animals have to live with, and realise that a significant number of beaches could possibly be the habitat for hundreds of unfortunate sea turtles, in need of laying their eggs in a polluted and dangerous environment. This is because, all the trash from the shore will end up in the ocean and, as a result of this, sea animals could be harmed, or even killed.
In addition to attempting to ameliorate the situation, we will be publishing pictures of our project on two well-known organisations called Omilo and Archelon, since they are famous for raising awareness on these specific issues, such as the lives of innocent sea turtles. We are doing this in order to impact and reach out to the most people as possible, since we truly believe that, if we manage to reach out to the community, we will be able to make a change. It is essential to improve the conditions which are planet is at and prevent it from deteriorating.
Our Journey
Now that we are completing the GSL project, I think that we can definitely say that our team has developed a variety of skills as a result of our participation in this competition. First and foremost, in my opinion, I believe that our teamwork skills have improved drastically, due to the fact that we had to learn to cooperate as a team in harsher conditions, online, due to lockdown. We now have weekly meetings online in which we discuss our project and advance through the phases of completing it without difficulty, showing our commitment to this project and to making it the best it can possibly be.
Furthermore, I believe that we all, individually, had to adapt quite quickly to having to do everything online, as the lockdown was imposed quite abruptly. This is a skill we definitely improved on, as we are now independent and able to complete the necessary tasks. Another skill we obtained from this competition experience was the ability to broaden our knowledge on certain environmental topics that need to be addressed worldwide due to the gravity of the problem, by researching these sea animals ( turtles ) and getting to acknowledge the seriousness of this problem. Which is why we are now even more eager to transmit a message to our school as well as, hopefully, our city.
Furthermore, we learned how to create a website online, with the help of one of our team members who was already familiar with doing so, therefore we were able to practice this skill and learn quite interesting things from it.
Our biggest challenge for our project will be building the actual structure of our plastic turtle, due to the fact that it is quite hard to reunite our group because of lockdown. However, we will certainly find a solution to this obstacle we are facing, as a group, and overcome it without difficulty.
Our Next Chapter
We have reached an environmental crisis the past years, global warming. It is necessary to prevent the disruption of our planet. Even at young ages, we can work towards a better future, and therefore, have no apologies to ourselves and the future generations for standing idly whilst our world is deteriorating. There is still hope to rebuild and save our planet and future; even if you think that it is not up to you, it is; everything can make an impact. We firmly recommend to all people to get involved in any way you can. Save our planet, your home.
The 2020-21 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2021. If you belong to one of the 500+ 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.
