Ways to Raise Environmental Awareness
Raising environmental awareness among students might seem like an easy task. After all, you only need to communicate to make them aware of what is happening to the natural resources around them.
However, to be effective at raising awareness, to compel them to action, is the hard part. Students can listen and forget about it with the next ringing bell. So the big challenge is this: How do you raise environmental awareness and make students and teachers alike to ponder on what they themselves are doing to the environment?
Tap talents.
During Canada’s Environment Week, students from three schools were honored in an environmental awards ceremony for their essays on Environmental Stewardship and Excellence.
The essay contest, meant to increase awareness and stimulate creative thinking and action towards environmental problems, was on climate change and its impact on nature, and was participated in by 200 students. The students voiced their concerns regarding humanity, wildlife and ecosystems, impacts of environmental organizations, and sustainable development.
This kind of outpouring and voicing out of opinions can also be encouraged in Earth Day musical concerts by campus bands, an art and photography exhibit at a prominent place in the school, or a contest for the biggest earnings in a yard sale of ‘no longer used at home’/recycled things for the business-minded students.
Start or join a national or global environmental group.
Razceljan Salvarita, an artist and environmentalist, started his own Solar Generation-Pilipinas chapter in Negros after realizing that he can also take Greenpeace’s youth arm into his locality.
After organizing and getting core group members, the SolarGen Negros Oriental chapter started going to different schools in Dumaguete to talk about renewable energy, encourage students to pledge in the “Simple lang” campaign, and show “An Inconvenient Truth” to interested students.
Recently, a Solar Camp was held where interested students from different schools gathered together for two-three days and really went in-depth about environmental issues so that they, in turn, could spread the word to others.
Joining an environmental group or starting one in your locality is a great way to raise awareness because it gives students and teachers a chance to actually do something about the environmental issues plaguing the community.
Moreover, since they are part of a group, they usually end up more committed to the environment because of the camaraderie and support from the organization.
Take the initiative into the administrative level.
A possible major activity of a class or campus-based environmental group is to get the school administration to establish its own green projects and build green partnerships with other schools.
Agreements between schools could stipulate a commitment to decrease energy consumption through environmentally productive methods or to implement waste segregation scheme campus-wide. Intra- or inter-school competitions, programs could be spearheaded to encourage and support environment projects of both teachers and students.
If students, teachers and schools will join hands, such collective initiatives are guaranteed to create a large scale impact towards saving the environment.
Sources:
“Environmental Excellence Celebrated in the Rouge Park.” Retrieved April 2, 2008
http://www.frw.ca/rouge.php?ID=130
(Published 08 April 2008, Smart Schools Program)
