We are delighted to share a blog written by student David Guarín from The Columbus School, 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.
The most personally rewarding journey
Project Overview
What our group is trying to achieve is to help a community of people with their recycling routines. We are trying to create a method to make recycling more efficient and inducing people to recycle. Our goal is for everyone in that small community to start recycling with our method. The problem we are trying to tackle is how bad recycling habits lead to more problems like contamination/Pollution.
On a daily basis, people can use big amounts of plastic, a material that is harming the environment and its inhabitants. What our group wants to do is to create awareness on people to refuse plastic when offered. We also want to use plastic bottles and disposable food packages to create some “bricks” in order to build houses for the poor. About a thousand people live in our complex, with the amount of plastic consumed by a family of four, we estimate that a bottle could be filled up in about 2-3 days. In addition to the whole complex where we will reduce littering with our idea, countless persons without a home could be positively affected.
Our Journey
As a group, We have developed many skills. Learning to work together, convincing other people to join our voyage to heal our planet. Our skillset has been fundamental in the development of our project, as we continue to progress in the processes. We have learned a lot about ourselves. The satisfaction of doing something for your own community and people has really increased our self-esteem, and we even learned to feel a lot better about ourselves and knowing that we are doing something good and useful, for the first time in our lives.
The Next Chapter
All we have to do next is increase our production and become more organized and efficient in our manners. We are happy that we have not only modernized our own recycling habits in our home, but we are also helping reshape the routines of hundreds of people in our local neighborhoods. We also need to improve in our consistence, since it is important for the development of the project.
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.