Three Miles Secondary emerges winner of Bartica Green Quiz

Georgetown Guyana, June 5, 2017

Students of the Three Miles Secondary School yesterday walked away with the champion trophy after the first Green Quiz organized by the Municipality of Bartica.

The students of the Bartica Secondary School proved no match for the Three Miles quizzers who skillfully exhibited their knowledge of the environment.

The participants were quizzed on the definition of a carbon footprint, the meaning of composting, the concept of global warming, their understanding of sanitation management and various aspects of recycling, deforestation and greening.

The winners were announced by Senior Welfare Officer attached to the Ministry of Education, Mr Zulficar Hack.

Town Clerk of Bartica, Phebe Wallerson during the presentation encouraged the students to strive for excellence and to continue to make Bartica proud.

Wallerson said she was impressed with the students’ efforts and undertook to ensure that the quiz was not the last of such activities organized to promote the town’s green agenda.

The #GreenGenerationGuyana team from the Ministry of Communities also visited two schools in Bartica, reminding teachers about the need to enforce proper sanitation habits and sensitising students against discarding of their waste indiscriminately.

The team, accompanied by Bartica Mayor, Gifford Marshall along with councilors Hazel Allicock and Ivor Melville, engaged fifth and sixth grade students from St John the Baptist Primary and Two Miles Primary School.

The team was thrilled to learn that Two Miles Primary has an active environmental club led by a student and was leading the way in the greening of Bartica schools.

Mayor Marshall noted that the town has charted a course and is already on a green pathway that would require the input of all residents.

He told the students that he was enlisting their help in his quest to ensure that Bartica becomes the “Green Capital of the Caribbean” and the envy of all.

The Mayor handed over the life sized poster, classroom wall posters along with colour coded garbage bins to each of the schools.

The students were very receptive and provided responses to many of the questions during the interaction with the Public Relations Representative, Danielle Campbell-Lowe.

The Green Generation Guyana Project is a public education campaign aimed at sensitizing school-aged children about the importance of adopting acceptable waste management habits.

Volunteer students are given various items of waste to place in the correct receptacle based on whether it should be composted, recycled, disposed of or reused.

The team has also been identifying “Litter Guardians” in each schools who are tasked with protecting the image of their classrooms.

So far, the #GreenGenerationGuyana crusade has been taken to municipalities in Corriverton, Rose Hall, Linden, New Amsterdam and Georgetown and will soon be in Lethem and Mabaruma.

The intention is to see Guyana eventually develop into a state that has a modern and advance system of waste management including separation at source, reuse and recycling.

The project was conceptualized on the belief that children are one of the main conduits of promoting lifestyle changes since they insist on any type of new information garnered from the formal education system.

It was on this basis that the project was officially launched by Junior Minister of Communities, Dawn Hastings-Williams at three youth camps along the Soesdyke/Linden Highway (Camp Wesleyana and the New Testament Church of God, Kuru Training Centre).

Thereafter, it was taken to St Anns and Joshua House childcare homes. Two community-based organisations in Bartica and Linden also benefitted from the project.