We are delighted to share a blog written by student Amna, from Emirates National Schools – MBZ, who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2021-22 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!
A mind-opening challenge that introduced us to many opportunities and experiences
Project Summary
Entering the GSL Global Goals Competition, our group, Shades of Green aims to improve the life on land through creating a sustainable environment. Our movement consists of multiple stages that will help us achieve our goals, as a group, we started by innovating a device that uses an irrigation system which will automatically water plants once the sensors detect that the soil is dry and that it needs moisture. We created this product because we realized that most people don’t plant not just because they don’t want to, but because they are unable to or lack knowledge on gardening.
A busy life might keep people away from caring about the environments as they feel unmotivated to take time out of their day for planting and learn how to take care of plants, so through our device, we aim to make planting much easier and to encourage people to garden and create a more sustainable environment. We are also raising awareness through social media and collaborating with other people to increase the awareness and to also gain different opinions and suggestions for improvement, and through social media we were able to interview an organization and other communities with similar aims.
The Journey
By working hard on overcoming each stage on this project, we all gained new skills and experiences! Some skills that I see the most improvement on or gained was communication and responsibility skills. We had our first interview experience with an organization that we introduced ourselves to through social media, we were able to communicate our aims and objectives clearly and introduce them to our project, this experience introduced me to new ways that we could collaborate with people and even showed me that us as a group are capable of making a change. We were also thinking creatively for ways in which we could take action and for creating and developing our device.
I would say that the biggest challenge that we might face is arranging our campaign and making sure that everything is good when we start it, however, I believe that our team will be capable of overcoming this challenge by planning ahead of time and getting the resources early as well has having a list of activities relating to our project that our audience might enjoy.
The Next Chapter
Currently we are in the stage of starting our campaign at school, first, we will be sending an awareness video soon that will be played in the morning assembly to all of the middle and high school students in our campus. This will raise awareness in our school and make people realize how our environment is important to us, to create a sustainable environment, we should make sure the people surrounding us are aware of these issues and know its impact. Next we will begin with an awareness event at the primary school on Earth Day (22nd of April) that will show the young generation how fun gardening can be and to tell them about our device and the environment. The students will be decorating pots and planting seeds in the pot, we will also show them how our device can take care of their plants and water them effectively. we will take care of these plants through our device and also distribute the pots later on.
We are planning on taking this project to the next level and not only in the GSL competition, we will be continuing raising awareness and starting small awareness events around the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and also meeting with an employee from the Ministry of Agriculture to gain opinions and suggestions and to find different ways in which we could expand on our project!
I would 100% recommend others to get involved to similar projects, this provides many new opportunities and experiences that you’d never expect but you’ll only be able to take on this challenge with a well driven mind and by being optimistic about your initiative. If no one starts taking action, who will? us as the younger generation should show the world how the global goals are important to develop a community that is constantly improving and finding new solutions to issues around the world.
