Earth Day

5.10.09

We held our first full event – one that we planned from start to finish, rather than just helping with someone else’s project – for Earth Day on April 22nd. Our town had never formally celebrated Earth Day before, and Filipinos love any excuse to celebrate a holiday, so we saw this as a good opportunity to do some environmental education!

With our counterparts and the help of a local fishermen’s association, we decided to hold a coastal cleanup in two villages. About 80 community members participated in the event, doing two hours of active cleanup in the morning before the heat became too unbearable. Our only regret is that we didn’t clarify what we meant by “cleanup” – since most of the adults in one of the villages were determined to wield machetes and just clear brush and weeds the whole time… BUT we rallied the kids to do a pretty extensive litter pick up, and in the other village they collected over a dozen large rice sacks of trash from the shoreline and mangrove areas. We also secured the use of the municipal garbage truck, which was a big deal – because normally folks (even with good intentions) just burn their trash.



After the cleanup, we did a short program for the participants with interactive lessons about pollution and waste management. The adults did an activity called “Who Polluted the Ocean,” a story that shows how human impacts have progressively affected the coastal environment, and the kids did a “litter relay” race where they had to sort waste into different categories (reusable, recyclable, compostable, and residual). Afterward, both communities joined together for a meal.

[barangay captain addresses the group]

[Who Polluted the Ocean?]

[litter relay]

[litter relay debrief]

We were fortunate to have secured donations from community members for the meal, and our nanay’s daughter who was visiting from the US provided funding for materials and prizes. With this support we were able to give school supplies to all the kids who participated.

Everyone pitched in to make it a success – our coworkers gave mini-lectures during the program about waste management and the significance of Earth Day. Barangay and fisherfolk captains led the interactive lessons and talked with participants during the cleanup about reducing their use of plastics.

We hope to build on this and have a larger Earth Day celebration next year, when we don’t have the constraints of the election. But it was good to have our first fully-organized event under our belt and it was great to see the communities working together toward a common goal. Plus, really, in Peace Corps, it’s rare that even a simple event comes off without any real glitches, so we’ll take it!

[our work team + barangay & fisherfolk captains - plus, not a bad location for our day's work!]