Recycling - February 2013 - A new group... but the same commitment!

The Recycling and Sustainability service programme commenced in the second school semester. While me and Jenn will continue as co-leaders under the supervision of Mr. Ian Lockwood, this semester the OSC Recycling and Sustainability service group will welcome many new members. As the service group will be starting afresh, it will be important to build a team spirit and establish good communication in order to accomplish our service goals. These goals in general include continuing the recycling material collection within the school campus in an efficient manner, increase the environmental sustainability of our school community by recycling used (and non-reusable) paper, cardboard, plastic and some metals, and finally, help develop a responsible and caring attitude towards use of resources within the school community by setting up trays for reusable paper in all rooms and thoroughly filtering recycling materials obtained for reusable items. We may add glass to the items we recycle in order to increase our school's eco-logical footprint.

The following students will be taking part in Recycling and Sustainability for Semester 2:

Anaath Jacob

Anna Schosser

Arnont Singsathitsuk

David Tchoumak

Januda Muthugama

Malaika Salman

Nisala Saheed

Nitika Singh

Sarocha Vitthayakrai

Varun Menon

The first session was held on 7^th of February. On the day, a previously planned introduction and many organized ice-breakers were carried out to start the activity in order to promote group bonding and community service spirit. Recycling material collection was initiated at 3:10 pm. There was also a small  reflection session in the end. By the end of the day, I developed new skills of addressing students with a formal introductory speech by overcoming the challenge of speaking in front of a group as a leader, and guiding the students by leading as a role model. However, I also realised that as the eldest students in the group other than myself and Jenn are 7th graders, it will be difficult to look for future recycling service leaders. Thus, this will be one of the challenges me, Jenn and Mr. Lockwood will be working towards.

Recycling sessions have been going well since and I am happy with the active participation of our current team. While new types of challenges have been coming up, we have tackled and overcome them efficiently in collaboration and they have not caused any hindrance to our weekly sessions.

Some photos of one of our sessions this month are given below:

Helping in packing recycling material before it is sent to the recycling center.

Some primary school children enjoyed learning about our service.

Ready to go!

This month was packed with service based action for me as well. As a leader, I (along with my co-leader) have been challenged both physically and mentally. Regular sessions are planned differently according to special requests or different scenarios. Thus, spontaneous planning, organization, and teams and task distribution test me mentally as a leader. At the same time, actively keeping track of all students, keeping records of collection before, during and after sessions, as well as participating in collection and cleaning tasks myself test me physically as a leader. All these tasks have enabled me to develop a very useful set of skills as a leader which will be useful to me in the distant future as well.

Now, I look forward to the final lap and hope it will be as exciting as this month!