Bahamian
Schools enter UNESCO Community Sandwatch Competition
Students
from Hope Town Primary School, Abaco, Bahamas, won second prize
for their entry to the UNESCO Community Sandwatch Competition.
In their project, entitled "Share
our care, be aware" the students had to re-organise their
project after their target beach at Hope Town was devastated by
three hurricanes in September 2004. They measured related ecosystems
such as mangroves and coastal forest and found these recovered
faster than their beach site. They then focused their efforts
on planting sea oats on recently restored sand dunes and preparing
a brochure to guide visitors on ways to conserve the coral reef.
'Planting
sea oats is not easy - we had sore backs throughout. We will
now measure the growth of our special patch of sea oats. We
made signs to put out so people do not walk on our babies.'
Students
from the Yellow Elder Primary School in Nassau, New Providence,
submitted a project on "Operation
Love your Beach' to the 2005 UNESCO Community Sandwatch Competition.
They selected South Beach, a beach in need of attention, as their
project beach. They determined the main types of beach users and
found there were two main problems: (1) beach users did not give
much thought to keeping the beach clean and (2) there were no
garbage bins. They addressed the first issue with a poster competition.
Then they painted environmental messages on 55-gal oil drums,
which they placed on the beach to serve as garbage cans. However,
unfortunately the garbage bins were stolen. With the help of a
local TV station, they publicsed their problem, and after much
effort, one of the island's private garbage collection companies
agreed to supply an industrial sized garbage bin for the beach.
'From
this project we learnt children can make a difference. Without
money, things move slowly, but if we have patience and never
give up, we can have success. And that's what we want for our
beach'
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