1. LOOK BEFORE YOU DUMP
A project by Loreto Day school Sealdah, Kolkata
Change makers – Jaisica Joyeeta Das, Zoya Khan, Sanjukta Mullick,
Cinderella Palma and Pallavi Sharma.
Mentor teachers- Ms N.Bir, Ms M.Gomes, Ms R.Ghosh
Step 1-Feel:
When we went on an observation walk through the whole school, we
became aware of a striking problem. There is an asbestos roof adjacent to
the class V classrooms in the first floor. We felt sad to see that the top of the
roof had become dirty since children from the 1st , 2nd and 3rd floors had been
throwing down things from their windows onto this roof. These items ranged
from bottle caps to handkerchiefs to banana peels. Something had to be
done.
Step 2- Imagine:
• Form groups and think of ways to stop girls from throwing any more
rubbish out of the window.
• Discuss with teachers and devise ways of creating awareness among
the school community about cleanliness.
• Find ways of involving everyone, (esp. the students of the classes
from which the rubbish is dumped on the roof) in the mission.
2. Step 3- Do:
We formed a group of five girls .
• We first went to our principal Sister Cyril who arranged for the
roof to be cleaned.
• We drew many posters and placed them on the windows through
which the rubbish is normally thrown out. We also put up
massages throughout school.
• We spoke to the classes during the day about the problem and
asked them to help us in our missions.
• We took turns checking the roof once after every class to see if
something had been dropped there.
• The girls of the house on duty in a particular week were also
entrusted with the responsibility of keeping an eye on their
classmates to ensure that everyone from their class was dropping
waste only into the bins.
• If no truants at all were found in a week the house on duty would
be given 5 extra points.
3. • With sister’s permission and encouragement , we took turns
speaking about the problem and appealing for all the students’ help
during assembly.
• Anyone caught dumping things out of the windows was taken to
the respective house captains to be spoken to.
Step 4- Share :
We are happy to say that we have largely succeeded in our little
mission and the asbestos roof next to the class 5 classrooms looks
much cleaner than it used to. We are also feeling quite proud as we
ourselves have thought of this whole action plan. Today whenever we
see anything lying around , we immediately pick it up and put it into a
bin. We also encourage others to do the same. We even scold our
juniors and remind our seniors if we see them littering the school
premise. Since we started this project we promised ourselves never to
throw things like toffee wrappers, tickets, chips packets etc out of our
bus ,car or train windows. We have realized that it is up to us to keep
our environment clean.