Nov

Educating about climate change through educating school students and university students to combat climate change

The primary focus of SL Team 07’s project is to educate school and university students about climate change. The escalation of climate change has been largely attributed to a lack of awareness, making it crucial to target these students, who will shape the future of the country. This initiative aims to create a climate-conscious force in the Southern Province, an area currently underrepresented in climate action efforts in Sri Lanka. The project seeks to raise awareness among students, encouraging them to take individual actions to mitigate future climate impacts while fostering their active participation in finding solutions. Key challenges include overcoming students’ indifference toward such programs due to their limited understanding of climate issues and the substantial time required for project implementation. Expected outcomes include increased environmental awareness, enhanced knowledge and skills, active engagement, and tangible environmental impacts.

*The main program of our project is to create a force against climate change in the southern province. In order to prepare the background for this, a series of awareness programs were implemented in the second phase and school students were informed that the climate change force that is expected to be created will cover the southern province. Doing and thereby getting their active contribution against climate change is an effect of this and thus they have to find solutions for climate change and work to reduce them. *Bentota carried out a beach cleaning program on the Kaikawala beach in Idurwa, which was carried out with the help of university students and the Bentota Divisional Secretariat, which removed the garbage on the beach and had a short-term effect on the beach. The main objective of this program was Through educating the villagers and drawing attention to the impact of coastal pollution on climate change. *Against climate change, we created awareness through social media in the project, and through this, we created awareness about every program related to our project, and presented them through infographics, videos, and created awareness about our project and also presented relevant information about climate change. This has enabled many people to use social media to raise awareness about climate change. *Through our project, an awareness program was carried out for the school students of Bentota Tunduwa Muslim Maha Vidyalaya. By this, it was possible to increase the unity between the nations, as well as to get the unity and contribution of different nations to stand up against climate change. *Through the sapling distribution program carried out in Kesbewa area, we gave the local residents of the area awareness about climate change and to act against it, we gave them plants to plant and this helps to have a long-term effect against climate change. *The plant planting program carried out in G/Elakaka National College was carried out by gathering the principal and teaching staff of that college and the school students and in this way, the school students were able to plant a number of plants as carbon absorbers under several programs and this led to a long-term impact. *The awareness program carried out with the resource contribution of the Central Environment Authority was carried out in the University of Kelaniya and through this it was possible to create awareness and create cooperation through this by connecting with the Central Environment Authority institutionally.

TEAM MEMBERS: