Syria Today | Volunteers promote environmental awareness

Volunteers promote environmental awareness

Hundreds of aid agency workers and volunteers hit the streets of Damascus and Lattakia to pick up rubbish as part of International Volunteers Day on December 5.

Eight hundred volunteers and 1,150 children took part in the clean-up campaign, led by United Nations Volunteers (UNV), which included children’s workshops about protecting the environment, group rubbish collecting outings and the distribution of canvas bags.

In Damascus, volunteers cleaned up the streets in Baramkeh, Mezzeh, Kafer Suseh, Barzeh, Somaria and the Old City using tools and vehicles donated by the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) volunteers distributed canvas bags and information leaflets promoting environmental issues at the Cham City Centre shopping mall in Kafer Suseh. Promoting the slogan “Enough with the plastic – use canvas bags”, volunteers grabbed shoppers leaving the supermarket to inform them about the negative impact plastic has on the environment.

“We have chosen to focus on plastic bags and the dangers of them because this is an issue very visible to all of us and an easy target with a great impact for an environmental campaign,” UNV programme officer Signe Ejerskov said.

Educational and recreational activities for children were also held at Damascus’ al-Fayha centre and Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. Children decorated and painted their own canvas bags, writing messages such as “protect the environment” and “stop pollution”. They also took part in dance and music performances, environmental pop-quizzes and workshops on how to make toys from recycled rubbish, and the use of the internet as a tool for researching environmental issues. Educational films about the dangers of plastic were also shown.

In Lattakia, members of the Youth Union and Scouts cleaned the beach and distributed hundreds of canvas bags around the city. Children’s activities were also held in the city.

“We want to raise environmental awareness through dialogue, games and fun activities and we want to include children, youth and adults,” Ejerskov said. “Everybody is important when it comes to knowing about good environmental behaviour and we need to mobilise a lot of people in order to reach everybody out there.”

The annual IVD, which pursues a different campaign each year, aims to promote volunteering as a means of bringing people together to improve society.

Participants in this year’s IVD included NGOs and private businesses as well as the Syrian Ministry of Local Administration and Environment, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Relief and Works Agency, SARC, Youth Union and Scouts-Lattakia.