PVIS students clean surroundings during Sustainability Day

Port Vila International School (PVIS) ran the school’s first Sustainability Day last Friday where the children spent the morning exploring all sorts of options around sustainable living using recyclable material and doing a cleanup of the area around the school in Erakor and Tasariki.

The little ones went towards Tassariki where the roads are quiet and their older students headed down along the road across the bridge doing the roadside cleanup along the Erakor Road.

Sarah Chambers, Principal at PVIS explained that the idea was student-led in which the students asked the school have a Sustainability Council.

“So, we listened to them. We understood that our young people are very interested in the environment and what they can do to ensure that we look after and care for our beautiful surroundings,” she added.

“We have a couple of leaders in our school – our primary school sustainability leader and a secondary sustainability leader and they coordinate a group of children who are passionate about the environment. From this group they have asked that they have an opportunity to do some work in the community and lift everybody’s awareness about what we can do.”

On Friday morning all of their students made a recycled shopping bag so that they have a bag ready for when the plastic bag ban comes on in July. And after that they went out and did some cleaning up in the local area with some rubbish collection.

Also, they looked at other ways that can be sustainable, looking at the local culture – the use of leaves for plates and ensuring that they use their local environment to make sure that they are not making plastic, what they used first of all.

“They made some leaf plates for their picnic and at lunch time we had a ‘no rubbish’ lunch, trying to make sure they had no packets that get thrown away, and we have leaves that are very small and environmentally friendly.

“Our students are very strong environmentalists, they have good ideas and they need opportunities to be heard and to take action, so, we feel that this small action can make a big difference for lots of people,” the PVIS Principal continued.

“I think in Vanuatu today there is a huge interest in what we can do as individuals and as community groups to really look after our local environment.

“We have some partnerships already with organizations like the ‘No Plastic Bag Please’ campaign, Assure Water and their recycling of water bottles. We have the PVIS 5 campaign happening and our lunch caterer has come on board and they are helping us with our ‘No rubbish’ lunch.

“So, we are very keen to make connections in the wider community to really build on the momentum and the enthusiasm around this idea,” she added.

Principal Chambers said they were happy to be part of the community at PVIS and they felt that it was very important.

“We are a school that has many international perspectives, but also we have strong ni-Vanuatu enrollment at school, so we feel that we’re really making the connections between our local community and culture and gives our international students very valuable experience, and that’s something that we value here at PVIS.”