Hope and Action Summer Camps “Environment Ambassadors”

Hope and Action Initiative to Protect the Environment, which is launched by the Islamic Relief earlier this year, in corporation with the Ministry of Education implemented three summer camps “Environment Ambassadors”.

These three summer camps aim to raise environmental awareness among children from age 12-14 and to encourage them to adopt new behaviors and practices friendly to the environment. Also, to build a generation embraces the initiative spirit to protect the surrounding environment. Hopefully this would reflect positively on the school environment and on the Palestinian environment too, and would leave a great impact on the participants and their families and friends as well.

The children role as Environment Ambassadors at their schools will begin with the start of the school year. The team work in corporation with the Ministry of Education will follow up the children and activate their role in the environmental club inside the school and will provide the necessary facilities so they could launch their initiatives targeting their friends and colleagues to inculcate the initiative and volunteer culture in children.

The initiative team chose 15 health promoters and 3 supervisors with competences and experiences in the work and effectiveness in performance. Later, an introductory workshop was held for the health promoters participating in the summer camps to enhance their abilities and to put a work plan to achieve the expected outcomes.

180 children joint the three camps on the first day distributed in 3 camps, where each camp contained 60 children. Each camp contained four corners; the Environment Corner, the Agricultural Corner, the Hygiene Corner, and the Recycling and the Reuse Corner.

The first corner is the Environment Corner; in this corner, children will be given an introduction about the environment and will learn general information about it as well, and then they will be briefed about the problems which the environment suffers from so they could be aware from in their life. After that, they will be taught good behaviors to protect the environment.

The second corner is the Agricultural Corner; in this corner, children will be given information about the plants in Palestine and about the agricultural problems and the pesticides. After that, children will learn the organic planting and will practically exercise planting in the garden.

The third corner is the Hygiene Corner; in this corner, participants will learn the importance of the personal hygiene and they will be given information about the diseases resulting from poor hygiene. There will also be awareness sessions concerning the public hygiene as well as cleanliness campaign inside the school.

The fourth and final corner is the Recycling and the Reuse Corner; in this corner, children will learn the importance and benefits of recycling. They will also be educated about the waste types and its problems in the Gaza Strip. Participants will also learn the safe waste disposal methods and they will be asked to design models for recycling.

At the end of the camp; 30 posters related to the environment and its problems were produced, more than 50 trees were planted inside the schools, explanatory brochures for personal hygiene were designed, and more than 60 artworks made from the waste of the camp were presented.

The activities and events were concluded at the end of the fifth day with three exhibitions presenting the outputs and outcomes of the camps.