Creating awareness on protecting environment in the community

Apart from its regular beach cleanup drives, the Doha Environmental Actions Project (Deap Qatar) held a series of talks and lectures this month at various schools across the country.A lecture at Birla Public School focused on the negative effects of plastic pollution and how people, especially students, can be part of the solution than contributing to this environmental menace.Fourth grade students at Qatar Academy Doha were engaged in an interaction about the global environmental crisis.The presentation highlighted the key role the each individual can play to help mitigate various environmental concerns by taking action locally in the community.The group also held similar presentations at Philippine School of Doha (PSD), ACS International School Doha (for Grade 6 and 7 students), and Compass International School Doha (for Grade 7, 8 and 9 students).At PSD, Deap Qatar director Jose Saucedo said: “We learned about the global and local impact of plastic pollution, and discussed different things the students can do to help mitigate the problem in Qatar and around the world.”Deap Qatar’s beach cleanup drives were also organised this month, including at Al Zubarah beach, to mark the World Cleanup Day – held annually on September 15. The initiative, organised by the Ministry of Municipality (represented by the General Cleanliness Department), in co-operation with Deap Qatar, Qatar Museums, HSBC Bank employees, and other companies and organisations in the country, brought together 200 volunteers from different sectors and collected six tonnes of waste.Deap Qatar’s social media posts saw some 53 volunteers from the Filipino community, led by Bantay and Kasannga team, taking part in a cleanup activity at Fuwairit recently, removing 200kg of trash. A similar initiative at Al Thakira gathered dozens of volunteers to clean the area aimed at protecting the mangroves. Deap Qatar also launched in August its free environmental educational packs for primary and secondary schools (English and Arabic) that “contain several mini lessons that can be included in the school’s curriculum or serve as an extension for extracurricular activities such as beach and desert cleanups or eco-club educational activities”.