Young campaigners send green message

Walking along the Marsascala coast road, sporting colourful hand-painted T-shirts and placards, kindergarten students from the locality and their teachers yesterday took their pro-environment message to the streets.

They wanted to raise awareness about the importance of safeguarding the environment because "it also benefits people's health", Rachel Fleri Soler, 10, told The Times.

She is the president of the school's environment committee, which is organising a series of pro-environment activities. After an activity earlier this month in which older students arrived at school on foot in an organised walk through the locality, yesterday was the turn of the kindergarten pupils to join the green campaign.

Five-year-old Zac provided an insight into the importance of reducing air pollution: "If we dirty the air, we will have dirty rain," he said in an unintentional reference to acid rain that is harmful to trees.

Narelle, 4, dwelt on the importance of not catching butterflies because they were better off fluttering from one flower to another while her class friend Daniel insisted he re-used paper "all the time".

The message to re-use and recycle was a constant theme and one of the banners carried by the students read: "We re-use and recycle, do you?"

Christine Barbaro Sant, assistant head of kindergarten at the Marsascala primary, said children cooperated fully and made good use of recycling bins installed on the school grounds.

"We have also installed a compost bin so that any fruit and vegetables left over by the children will be turned into compost and used in the school gardens," she said.

It was important for children to understand the importance of taking care of themselves, she added, but the school also tried to instil social awareness.

"The message we give them is that they form part of a community that is part of a country, which forms part of the world. Any action they take does not only have an impact on their immediate surroundings," Ms Barbaro Sant said, highlighting the theme "Different people, same Earth", chosen for this scholastic year.

"The intention is to create awareness at a very young age. They take their message to their families and this has an impact on the community," she said.

Three siblings aged four, Aidan, Kurt and Nicole, could have easily featured in an awareness campaign by Wasteserv. On each of their T-shirts was a different symbol representing the waste separation skips.

"We recycle newspapers and cereal boxes to save our planet. Plastic bottles make picnic tables..." they chanted together in a refrain from a song they will be singing next week during the school concert.

The President's wife, Margarite Abela, a Marsascala resident, was present for the walk, commending the students for their initiative.

Students from other primary schools that form part of the St Thomas More College, which includes the Marsascala school also joined the fun.

In all, 180 pupils took part.