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Primary and high school students may have only just returned to the classroom following their Christmas break but the Department of Environment is wasting no time in getting them involved in an awareness campaign to protect Belize’s natural resources. In the first instance primary school students are being invited to submit a proposal on an environmental project that they want to implement for their school. Prizes for the winning proposals will include partial funding for the project, a desk top computer and an encyclopaedia set. Primary school students have until January thirtieth to submit their proposals.

So if you would like to participate in the competition, you can call the Department of Environment at 822–2542 or visit their website at www.doe.gov.bz. And while primary school students are being encouraged to be creative with their environmental project, high school students are not being left out. In fact an environmental poster competition is now open for secondary students. Today the public relations officer for the Department of Environemnt Celi Cho told us what’s involved.

Celi Cho,
“It will be a good idea to raise awareness about wetlands especially since the topic of mangroves and cutting down mangroves and things like that people, especially in relation to tourism, people are concerned with that. So we wanted to have high school students as well as the public at large to think more about wetlands and why they are useful and what are the benefits and why we should try to conserve wetlands in our own country. They need to come up with an idea about how they can raise awareness about wetlands. We wanted to keep the topic open so if students came up with an idea that did not fall within a certain theme they can still submit it. So as long as it is awareness on wetlands, whether it is development, the impact of development on wetlands, they can come up with an idea to try and raise awareness among other high school students or the public and it is 30 by 40 centimeters on a sheet of paper, any type of material they want to use, it has to be in colour and it is single entry per student.”

Jacqueline Godwin,
So this is where the high school student needs to be creative?

Celi Cho,
“Yes because as well we chose the high school level for the poster competition because high school students, we need to get them more active in doing things and being creative.”

High school students have until January thirtieth to send in their entries.