Collaboration between Eedama and Grade 9 Wellspring students: Eedama instructors have been working in the frame of the ‘Community Action Service’ hours with Grade 9 students from Wellspring Beirut. They decided altogether to write some blog posts about this experience.
This page contains the first writings of the students, it will progressively be improved and enriched with pictures.
Garbage and recycling:
At the beginning of this ECA we encouraged the recycling of water bottles, however we realized that the machine which recycled bottles could not be moved to a more open area for students to see. Additionally we realized that there was a greater need to recycle paper, which is used by students and teachers alike on a daily basis. The process started when we noticed that there was an untouched and unused recycling bin that we could use to our advantage. We emptied and cleaned the bin and decided it would serve as our main bin on collecting day. Our first step to implementing recycling in the school was to take all the unused paper as a result of prints and photocopies in Ms. Zahia’s office. We found out that Ms. Zahia was already aware of how to effectively recycle (ripping paper into small pieces).
Compost and food waste recycling
What we have been doing throughout the year for ECA has been quite the experience.
First we wanted to choose a topic that had to do with gardening and compost. Since the other group took gardening we stuck with compost. First we had to understand what compost is. So we researched and tried to understand compost as much as possible. After getting to know more about the topic. We decided to go ahead and plan what and how we would use compost in school. We decided to start a compost system in school. The first thing we had to do is get a compost bin. After finding out that wood is a better material for a compost bin. We bought pieces of wood and spent a lot of sessions building it. After we finished building the compost bin we had to find collecting bins. We found 2 abandoned bins in the back gate. They happened to be in very bad conditions so we had to spend time cleaning and fixing them. Soon after finishing, our group sat and planned on how we raise awareness and how we could actually collect. So we began to make posters and hang them up next to our compost collecting bins. The posters included a list on what and what not to compost. We then went and informed all the cleaners in school not to empty our compost bins and to leave them until Wednesday for us to clean and throw in our large wooden bin. Once collecting actually began, every Wednesday we would go and throw out the food. Sometimes food was thrown in normal bins and so we had to empty those and try to find any organic food. After 2 weeks we noticed how most people were not actually throwing organic food in our bin. We also observed our large wooden bin and felt that there was little to no progress. We decided to take part in the schools monthly bake sale. We decided to make fruit salad, with the peelings and left overs, we were to throw them in the bin. We sold the fruit salad cups for 1,000. We ended up encouraging the students to eat healthier, for every cup we sold we informed them about our compost project. Most importantly we ended up with a large amount of organic food that we could compost. We threw it in our large wooden bin.
Gardening
Water Saving
