This week we wanted to delve into the kids perceptions of their environment now and 30 years from now. We got them to start the lesson by drawing pictures to represent this and to our great dismay, all the kids drew a broken environment in the future. We followed this activity with a story of hope which the kids loved - did you know the River Thames was pronounced dead 50 years ago? It's now the cleanest river in a city in the world!

The final activity involved getting into groups and thinking of questions that the kids could ask their parents about their environment 30 years ago. In order to get a plastics focus, we have asked the kids to bring in an example of something that their parents used to use that was not made of plastic but now is. We're looking forward to a great show and tell session next week!

Our first project kicked off to a great start in West Bali, the junior-high school is very excited to pilot the project with more than half the students including the current year 7s and the environment club. 

The teachers are keen for the students to be the ones to implement the project and therefore we began the first lesson by asking them first if they wanted to join the program and secondly, why? 

The education program is not only trying to reduce the plastic waste at the school, but also to encourage students to drink more water!

We asked the kids to divide into groups and create a poster explaining to the teachers why they wanted this program in their school. Here is a sample of the posters and the reasons they came up with:

A key component of our program aims to create ownership of the project. We believe that one of the best ways to do such a thing is to get the kids to design their own school logo for their bottles! These are some of the competition entries:

The students were given the following criteria for their water-bottle logos:
- The design must be 19cm (width) x 7cm (height) and of the colours: Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Black or White to meet printing requirements.
- It must bear the school's circular environment club logo of any size.
- It must have the words "Bottle for Botol" written on it of any shape or size.