For the third consecutive time, Gozo College’s Xewkija Primary School has been awarded the Green Flag, a prestigious international award presented to eco-schools for their efforts to promote an environmental and sustainable developmental education in their respective schools and healthy eco-friendly habits among the school community

Gozo Minister Anton Refalo presented the award to members of the school’s eco-school committee during the annual Ekoskola Seminar recently held at Qala Primary School.

The committee includes most of the school’s children as well as members of staff, and the local community strived day in, day out. For the past two years, Xewkija Primary has received a number of awards for green initiatives that it has undertaken on its own as well as with the cooperation of the Gozo College, Xewkija parish, Xewkija local council and NGOs.

The eco-schools programme was launched in Malta in 2002 by Nature Trust (Malta) as the local representative of the Foundation for Environmental Education. The programme is now being run in most schools in Malta, making it one of the biggest and most successful environmental programmes in the Maltese islands.

Ekoskola aims to raise students’ awareness of sustainable development issues thought classroom study and community action and to empower students in the running of the programme, thus helping to ensure that Malta will have more environmentally responsible citizens in future.