New education program with Seasoldier

We have partnered with the Indonesian NGO Seasoldier, to launch an innovative education program that is teaching junior high school students on Bangka Island, North Sulawesi about the environment surrounding them and the importance of looking after our oceans. The program is covering topics such as the coral reef, mangroves and sea grass beds, and will take students out of the classroom to experience these ecosystems.

The program been designed with the local community to ensure that it’s relevant and interesting for the students, and the lessons will be delivered by local representatives from Seasoldier. Participants will receive a certificate at the end of the program to support their applications for further training after school. All participants will become ambassadors of the ocean and some might even become the next generation of marine biologists!

“This program is very important in helping our students realise how lucky they are to live in such a beautiful place and that they must help look after it so that it survives into the future,” says Mr Jodi Umboh, principal of the local junior high school.

The education program has been developed as part of No-Trash Triangle Initiative’s efforts to create a waste management and community engagement program that can be replicated on other islands. Once the new educational program has been completed in December 2019, the Initiative will work with Seasoldier to make sure that it can be replicated on other small islands around the Coral Triangle, adapting it according to local needs.

“Creative education is a key part of the sustainable and replicable model we are developing together,” says one of the founders of the Initiative. “If the younger generation understands their environment, the impact their actions have and the possible solutions there are, they become a crucial part in implementing these solutions and fighting plastic pollution.”