Too Much Plastic Package at SMP 24 & River Program at SMA 11

Surabaya- The first destination today, Friday (30/7) was SMP Negeri 24. The visit in this school was relatively short. We run activity only for one hour because the students have to prepare for praying at 11. So we decided to do an observation instead of making presentation. I gave the students 20 minutes to observe the environment conditions of the school. After that we made a discussion. They told me, that there is a lot of rubbish on the ground in the school. Furthermore they complained that the canteen sells too much plastic packaging. Another issue is rubbish separation.

There are 3 different bins everywhere. One for organic waste, one for inorganic waste and one for plastic. Unfortunately nobody ca res about this system and in all 3 bins you can find plastic bottles. Then we talked about environment and environment pollution in general. After that we talked about river in detail. As homework I told them to draw a picture about rivers in Indonesia, to explain what can pollute a river, to find out causes and solutions. For the next visit I plan to run activities with them which are based on their ideas.

The next school was SMA Negeri 11. A senior highschool where located in Manukan, west part of Surabaya. There we were heartly welcomed by the headmaster and some teachers. Two of them were German teachers and it was fun for me to communicate with them. The class we visited was very small, only round about 40 students. After we divided them into two groups my group counts 14 students.

I used my laptop to show them pictures and tell about Germany. Some students could speak German and all of them could understand and speak English very well. After my presentation, the students were very curious about environmental issues and handling in Germany. They asked for example whether there are also so many motorcycles and cars in germany. They wanted to know, why there is not so many rubbish in the streets and in the rivers of Germany. What the biggest problems were in Germany.

We had a good discussion and I enjoyed this lesson very much. Also the teachers participated and had interesting ideas and questions. Then I asked them to find ideas for the dirty rivers in Indonesia. They had some ideas and I told them about the exhibition “environmental fun days” and they promised to prepare some ideas for next meeting. Next time they have to decide what they want to do for this exhibition, I just gave them some suggestions, but I left it up to them to choose.