Green Rose Project for environment literacy & awareness among young children

Abstract

The UKM Green School project adopts an environment literacy approach in its aim to communicate climate change impacts to primary school children. This is a holistic approach which develops community engagement to raise awareness, deepen knowledge and understanding of individuals and communities to collectively make responsible choices for the sustainability of the earth's environment. This engagement is instrumental towards spurring transformation of behaviours, beliefs and values to reduce "climate-provoking" activities (Rapley 2012) in the every day lives of the human population. Through empowering the younger generation with the knowledge and understanding of the challenges and issues of climate change this project hopes to initiate the primary school children into a community of change agents at home and at school, and eventually in their community at large. Principally, the UKM Green School project, which is into its third cycle now, has engaged teachers, primary school children and university students through partnerships with corporate institutions and government linked companies, to implement the ROSE principles (Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Offset. Substitute. Enhance). The principles are translated into activities and actions that raise awareness and understanding of how daily activities pertaining to energy usage, transport, daily consumption and waste output contribute to the ever growing carbon footprint. Through environment literacy multimedia materials specially developed for these young learners, the project set out to educate and empower participants with knowledge on how to act responsibly through sustainable actions and thus be part of a collective effort to save the threatened earth's environmental systems. This paper will share the Green School project team's experiences and the design of the programme executed at three levels: training of trainers, training of trainees, and engagement, with school children in schools to initiate them as climate change ambassadors. The paper concludes with a discussion on the impact of the programme on the participating communities and potential future developments for the programme.