IIE MSA WATER CONFERENCE: SMALL CHANGES FOR BIG RESULTS COMPETITION WINNERS

The Centre for Water and the Environment at the IIE MSA, in partnership with the Ecological Engineering Institute of Africa (EEIA), recently hosted the third annual IIE MSA Water Symposium. This year, the Symposium's theme was ‘Citizen Science - Uniting Science and Society for Sustainable Solutions’. 

In support of this theme and because education is key to address sustainability, The IIEMSA Centre for Water and Environment and ADvTECH jointly hosted the 'Small changes for big results' competition.

The aim of the competition was to encourage students to devise innovative and creative solutions to reduce their school’s environmental impact. No limits were imposed – as long as the focus was on sustainability. Video and poster entries were received from across Africa, offering solutions to issues like food and solid waste, water scarcity and energy. The competition was open to all Prep and College students at ADvTECH schools and students could enter either as a group or as individuals.

The winning entry, which focused on recycling of waste, was received from a Grade 6 student at Maragon Olympus, Albie Nel. Albie embarked on a mission to create awareness at his school about the importance of recycling and, to do this, he devised an experiment that demonstrated that placing recycling bins in strategic, highly visible places created awareness of, and interest in, recycling and led to more students recycling waste. Albie won R5000 for his entry and R25 000 for his school to implement his recycling solution.

Omoshonevho Aliu from Gaborone International School, won second prize for a proposed solution to water wastage and shedding, while the third prize went to Lisa Murori from Crawford International School in Kenya, for a solution to food waste management and disposal at her school.

Education is key to addressing and responding to sustainability risks, like climate change, pollution and water scarcity. With this competition, the organisers sought to harness the power of education by giving students in ADvTECH schools the opportunity to use knowledge, creativity and future-forward thinking to come up with innovative, inventive strategies to deal with current and future risks facing our planet. The outcome demonstrated that students do, indeed, understand that ‘small change’ can make a huge impact, if consistently implemented.

About the The IIE MSA’s Centre for Water and the Environment:

The Centre aims to understand the nexus between water, people and the environment in southern African and focuses on advancing research and building capacity, knowledge and resilience in the field of water resources management, environmental conservation and sustainable development (in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)). The Centre hosts an annual symposium focused on topical issues affecting water and the environment which is focused on bringing researchers, practitioners and the community together to collaborate, network, learn and engage on these issues.