A Jamaican puppet named Bob helped children from Icacos Government Primary School bring home to their classmates, teachers and the wider Icacos community the realities of global warming and the global water crisis.Bob, a "member" of the Chazaq Theatre Company, was one of the highlights of the Children Water Education Workshop, which was staged last month at Icacos Government Primary by the Institute for Gender and Development Studies/ Women Gender Water Network (IGDS/WGWN) of The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and sponsored by energy company Atlantic.
Staged under the theme Climate Change, My Community and Me, the workshop treated attendees to a play mounted by some of the 52 children who participated in the Children's Water Vacation Camp held by the IGDS/WGWN at the school in August. At that camp, children from Icacos and environs between the ages of seven and 12 learned about issues related to global warming and global water scarcity, and were also exposed to best practices in water management and water conservation.
For their final exercise, the young campers were asked to develop a play that highlighted the issues related to the water crisis, including pollution, conservation and how communities share and use water resources. As a follow-up assessment exercise to the vacation camp, the IGDS/WGWN staged the Children Water Education Workshop, where the children's play debuted to a receptive audience.To accompany the children's play and its messages about climate change and water conservation, Chazaq Theatre Company also performed a puppet show with a global warming theme, with humourous anecdotes by a number of puppets including Bob (a Jamaican Rasta), Figo (a little boy) and Enoch (a parrot).
Dr Fredericka Deare, coordinator of the IGDS/WGWN, explained that both the workshop and the vacation camp were developed as part of their efforts to research and influence water use and management in rural communities: Icacos, Biche and Matelot."Rain water harvesting remains a key component of water use and management in these communities. What we aimed to do is influence better water management starting at the household level, but targeting children, the next generation," Dr Deare said.
Trudy Solomon, sustainability officer at Atlantic, explained that water management was one of the issues related to sustainability, the philosophy to which Atlantic is committed. "Sustainability is a way of doing business for Atlantic, and also a way of life," Solomon said. "It means making sure that how we use resources like water today do not have a negative impact on people tomorrow. It means using resources wisely, thinking about the future."The IGDS/WGWN established the Children Water Education Programme in 2010, with camps held in Biche, Matelot and Icacos. This year, each community's water camp was over-subscribed. To further reinforce the message about water conservation and water management, the camp coordinators recruited participants from the 2010 camps to be junior facilitators for the 2011 cohort.
"We are pleased with the results and how we have been able to get the children to see the link between what they do at home, or what their community does and the kind of responses that result in the wider environment: for example, pollution and the impact on agriculture and fishing," Dr Deare said.Gail Alexander-Walters, principal of Icacos Government Primary School, said that the vacation camp had helped the children learn the issues of water conservation at a deep level. "The programme was well designed and I was impressed with how it explored the different learning styles of children-the tactile, the expressive and the theoretical," Alexander-Walters said.
"It obviously impacted the children because they were able to re-enact the play that they did all the way back in August with only one day's rehearsal. This showed that they remembered the information about climate change and water management, not at a superficial level but at the level where it is meaningful, and which they will very likely remember all their lives."Atlantic's sponsorship of the IGDS/WGWN programme is one of the LNG company's several initiatives focused on building sustainability in T&T. Atlantic's partnerships with NGOs facilitate energy skills training and certification; values-based vocational training; agri-entrepreneurship; community and youth development through sports and education; youth leadership development; and tagging and monitoring of sea turtles.