Sparrow provides green solution

Sparrow School Melville is going green.

Sparrow School launched an environmental awareness campaign on 31 October in an effort to educate pupils from a young age about the environment.

The event was a joint effort between Sparrow Schools, Greenpeace Africa, Green Beings, Earth Pro-biotic, UPcycle and Miss Earth.

“We are trying to instil environmental awareness and also to do this at a very young age,” said offline engagement intern from Greenpeace Reatlegile Lekalakala.

“If they (pupils) grow up knowing what environmental awareness is, then it will make it easier for them in the future to carry it on and save the planet,” she said.

Lekalakala also informed that the idea is that pupils can come and have fun in their own garden.

She also shared that the school aims to create a long-term project, by renovating empty garden space into a touch-and-feel garden.

This is not a once-off thing, we will be going to different Sparrow Schools in Gauteng to implement this new initiative, said Lekalakala.

“We want to give pupils the chance to feel, see, hear, watch and interact with their environment and to connect with nature.”

She said, “We also think that this space will be a special space for time-out and reconnecting with nature for the children, who often come from difficult home situations”.

During this ongoing process, pupils will start learning about the importance of nature, water and food waste.

On the day, by incorporating Earth Probiotic, the pupils were given an opportunity to make their own compost for their garden vegetables. They were also given lessons about solar energy.

Winnie McHenry from Upcycle, who was also educating pupils about the importance of waste, stated that they go into communities to educate unemployed individuals on how to make things from waste.

“We are basically trying to save the planet by educating people about how to treat the environment by making products from waste,” she said.