This year our school is participating in the Ed.U.Co project (together with Ljudska univerza Kočevje), connecting 8 EU countries, that care about our environment and try to make positive changes in the world. As a part of this project, we made a video about activities we are doing at our school to try to make this world a better place (you can see it here: https://youtu.be/juEFNMPU_VQ). We want to take care of our environment, our animals and people so we encourage students to volunteer and to notice what is wrong with the world and then do something about it. We can think about solutions and possible actions to take together. On November 6th I took our students Iva Nina Kersnič, Tita Ažman, Matea Kepnik and Lan Zobec with me to present our ideas in front of an international group of interested people. Everyone shared our belief that we always have to do our part and stay hopeful that the world can be a better place if we all work for it, together.
We have almost 600 children from ages 6 to 15 in our school, and I firmly believe that each one of them has something good to bring to this world. So if anyone has an idea they would like to bring to life, they can always talk to me. 😊
Written by: Zarja Golouh
What do students think about our environment and pollution? What do they care about?
We were taught to have a good relationship with the environment in Kočevje from a young age. Even in kindergarten, they talked to us about a healthy relationship with the environment. My earliest memories of this are from 1st grade when we would go on long walks with bags and pick up sticks to pick up litter along the way. This work was actually fun, because my classmates and I decided to compete to see, who could collect the most trash in their bag. Even though I didn’t win, I still felt proud, because I knew I was doing something good for nature. Therefore, I believe our school has done an excellent job of teaching even the youngest students to behave kindly towards the environment. I think we needed to be taught good habits from a young age, so I think we should create something that would be interesting for children too. I thought we could make unique trash bins, for example, shaped like vehicles, animals or something similar, as I think this would attract everyone to take a closer look and happily throw their trash in. That way, I hope we wouldn’t see so much plastic bottles lying two meters away from the trash cans anymore. (Iva Nina Kersnič)
I have first encountered recycling, when I was a child. We have always separated waste – paper, plastic, glass. Even metals had their own place. This concern for our surroundings has shaped my view of the world. Such a way of life should be respected in order to preserve nature for future generations. Disposal of plastics and other nondegradables that cannot be quickly recycled and therefore end up in landfills or in nature contributes to long-term pollution and causes damage to the ecosystem. We really have to be aware of that. (Tita Ažman)
I started being interested in recycling, when I first realized how much waste ends up in landfills and how bad that is for environment. I first started recycling at home, then I also researched how to recycle other materials (like plastic, paper and even more). For me it’s very important to make sure there is less pollution in the world and I want to do my part in that to help preserve nature for future generations and help people realize that together we can change the world into something better. (Matea Kepnik)
When I think of the word pollution, bad things come to my mind. One of its kind is water pollution. It is caused by human activities like agriculture, industrial waste and people who dump trash in different kinds of waters. We can prevent that by cleaning polluted water and by enforcing laws against it (like we have here, in Slovenia). First time I was faced with environmental pollution was back when I was little. I saw one guy with a trailer in a forest, who dumped all kinds of toxic materials on healthy forest ground. That hurt me very much as a child. If this can be 100% stopped, I think we will give this world much more time and beautiful moments. (Lan Zobec)
