You’d be surprised to find out how much a child can teach you. Especially when the child can get you to take a second look at a serious issue that everyone seems to have put aside.
When it comes to a group of children, you are bound to take notice. When it comes to a collaborative effort from school children and their teachers across Goa, everyone should pay attention.
Students and teachers of seven hundred and forty government primary schools in Goa have been involved a project called The Magic Box, that’s aimed at tackling the issue of garbage management. The project has just concluded its first phase. The second phase is about creating awareness among the public on garbage management and for this, an exhibition will be held in both the districts where the work of the teachers and students will be showcased.
In addition, a one of its kind book has been made by students from the fifth to the seventh standard of Santo Miguel school, Taleigao. The book titled ‘Kalakriti’, contains 4 stories related to waste management and will be in two languages, Hindi and English. The heroes are garbage bins, brinjals, elephants etc who fight against the villains to keep Goa clean and green. There are plan to do this every year, with a different school and with different languages and in the future, there will also be a DVD with the stories coming into life with 3D characters.
“It surprises us each and every time how creative these students can be. You will see some of the best work of art and imagination in our book. Above all we are waiting to see the reaction of the kids when they will see their own drawings now in a book. It will be priceless,” said Nalini Elvino de Sousa, manager of Communicare Trust. Communicare Trust is the NGO that executed The Magic Box project and will launch the book at the exhibition. They are organising the exhibition with the help the Directorate of Education, Goa who helped them work with the govenrment primary school teachers.
That’s not all. As part of their third phase, the NGO will run a collection collection drive for used T-shirts at Magsons (Miramar, Porvorim and Fatorda) and Delfino’s (Porvorim), from April 1 to April 15.
“We intend to offer a bag made of a used t-shirt to every visitor on the day of the exhibition,” added Nalini.
The NGO has been functioning in Goa for the past 11 years spreading and teaching various languages and cultural diversity. Besides their mission, they have always been trying to educate and make people aware about the major problems we have been facing and thus they took up the issue of garbage management in the state.
Nalini explained that amongst the eight hundred and fifty government primary schools in Goa, they have managed to cover seven hundred and forty of them, through the teachers who attended the workshop. She added that the exhibition will be a platform to see the effort of the NGO, their resource people and the teachers has paid off.
To implement this project, their team visited various schools across Goa, spent time with the children, taught them how to segregate waste and the importance of it. “We also taught them how to make a story line where the characters would be made out of waste and then they would be filmed, using stop motion,” said Nalini.
Over time they decided to take this project a step further in the belief that it these seeds need to be sowed at a very young age. Along with the Directorate of Education, Goa, the NGO held workshops for primary school teachers across the twelve talukas in Goa.
The Assistant District Education Inspector (ADEI) of every taluka coordinated with the teachers and arranged a meeting with their team. Their team consisted of various waste management experts from Goa. This included the likes of the Naree Artisan Movement (NAM) who have been known to create art out of waste (newspaper, cloth etc). Tallulah D’Silva of Mission Green Goa who has always been creating awareness by giving talks in schools and other places also worked with the team. Yogita Mehra of Green Essentials also joined them to share her brilliant idea of how we can make compost at home using the ‘khamba’. Khamba is basically one of the best and 100% nature friendly means through which you can compost waste which is generated in your kitchen.
“We exchanged information on how waste was treated and could have been treated in the school and localities. We studied that some places still burn all the wastes while other just dump them all without segregating,” added Nalini.
To give an opportunity for the teachers to share their knowledge amongst them, the exhibition is being organised where the teachers of all the talukas will come and share their experiences of what they have taken back and implemented from the workshop. Around ten to twelve teachers from each taluka will be showcasing their art the exhibition. The North talukas will be getting together in Don Bosco Oratory, Panaji and the South talukas at Big Foot Museum, Loutolim.
