Service: Earth Week Reflection

Earth Week took place from the 24th to the 28th of April however its planning took far longer than that. For this creativity project, I was assigned the role of being a project manager.


At Park Krakowski cleaning up with my group

My goal for this project was to increase awareness about Earth day and to engage people in celebrating it while acting environmentally. I also wanted to act as a role model and to successfully carry out my activities. This was my first time in being a project manager and although I knew that I would have to take care of many assignments, the eagerness in helping out the environment overcame that fear.

This project involved many different tasks:
1. Assigning roles to classmates
2. Advertisement (posters, emails, schoology and etc.)
3. Bake Sale
4. Volunteer clean up
5. Skills Competition
6. Planting flowers
7. Managing the plan for flowers
8. Recycling/Energy Saving Plan
9. Good Deeds
10. Debate
11. Thank you letter

My roles as a manager were to assign roles to classmates and to remind them of their tasks. I wrote emails regarding the bake sale and the Earth Week overall. A thank you letter to the school by schoology will also be written by me.



Although I did not have time to contribute in the bake sale, I did bake some sweets and during break offered to help sell.
My red velvet cupcakes that I baked for the sale
Other cakes in bake sale

For the volunteer clean up, I wrote safety guidelines along with a procedure. I also prepared maps to clean up along with the sites of segregation bins near the parks.

Safety
  • Volunteers MUST wear gloves when picking up litter
  • Material targeted for clean up is litter. Volunteers should NOT pick up any large, bulky items. 
  • If you don’t know what something is, do not touch or handle it. 
  • Do not stray from the group unless the supervisor has given permission
  • Be careful to avoid stepping on nails or broken glass
  • Do NOT handle any hazardous wastes or potentially hazardous materials—including motor oil, gasoline, batteries, syringes, plastic containers that smell or appear to contain toxic materials, etc. 

Procedure
  1. Students along with a supervisor will be given instructions on how to arrive to the designated location 
  2. When students have arrived, they will be given 3 separate garbage bags (one for plastic, one for paper and another for other)
  3. Before picking up litter students MUST put on their gloves
  4. It would be advisable if volunteers paired up, where one partner holds the trash bag and the other picks up the litter. 
  5. If task is finished, students must dispose of the bags at one of the garbage disposal areas

Map of segregation bins around Park Krakowski and Błonie

 I was able to attend the clean up with Mrs. Kumi's class on Wednesday at the Park Krakowski. I was in charge of the trip. I prepared the buses, materials and groups. The only difficulty I encountered was figuring out the bus stops and trying to find the segregation bins. I am proud to say that most of the students took me seriously and listened to me. I read out the safety guidelines and the procedure to them and later on handed them the materials (garbage bags, gloves, etc.). I asked them to group up into 5 or 6 with one IB student for each group. The rest went smoothly apart from the segregation bins. Small scraps of plastics and mainly bottle caps were found as trash in the park but it definitely changed the park once cleaned. I was not able to find the segregation bins where it was allocated on the map. However, we found another set of these bins on ul. Oleandry.

At the bus stop
Antek and his group
Segregating our trash
Due to the weather, IB has not been able to plant the flowers yet but I am very looking forward towards the event.
Liam Zeh was in charge of the Good Deeds, however, as project managers, Emma, Kacper and I during registration introduced this concept to several classes. Afterwards, there was a complication as to whether a class is able to make a smog campaign as recommended by us for their good deed. To gain more information on this matter, we decided to talk with the student council. Thanks to this meeting, we were able to clarify things on our behalf and it was decided that after a good deed was done, the class would create a poster on their reflections regarding the deed.

Kacper, Agata and I were also judges for the primary art competition. Their initiative was to create an object reflecting their house (Earth, Air, Water or Air) made out of recycling materials given to them. We walked around the classes during the progress and after the competition was done. Air won first place, Earth second, Fire third and Water last.

It was very touching for me to see kids enjoying these activities in spreading awareness and caring for the environment. Even in Spanish class, Mr. Juan showed us posters done by students in year 6 about the environment.


Therefore, I say that this project was very successful. Some parts of it became stressful and several classmates did not participate as much as were supposed to but nevertheless, it brought in a good change into the school.

Komentarze