Primary students from the Grande-Vallée school in the city of Marguerite d’Youvill, Canada, have exciting plans this year. As part of their W5 engagement, they decided to organise an “Earth Week” for the whole school to address a range of issues connected to the Waste theme.

When brainstorming about what to improve in the school, the student members of the school’s Eco-Committee “Ecol’eau Club” pointed out that the area surrounding the facility was not always clean. They had noticed that litter, including used masks, was left on their playground. To tackle this problem, the committee decided to organise a Spring-Cleaning Day which would involve every member of the school and raise awareness among students, teachers, staff, and even parents.

This Spring-Cleaning Day will form part of an even bigger event at the school: “Earth Week” – starting on the 18th of April. This week will be completely dedicated to the environment and will include several activities related to recycling, zero-waste, and sustainable use of energy. With funds from the Alcoa Foundation, the school plans to buy tools for the cleaning day as well as relevant educational materials to ensure that learning also takes place as part of the activities.

Grande-Vallée school is focusing on SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production in particular. Students will learn about waste prevention and recycling, sustainable management of natural resources, and what a sustainable lifestyle looks like in practice. By participating in the planning of these activities, students get a taste of the leadership, organisation, and advocacy skills needed to help achieve SDG 12.

“This project has been an extremely rewarding experience for our young Eco-Students. In addition to all the environmental knowledge acquired and skills developed along the way, we can clearly see some gains in the children that we had not thought of at first. Indeed, it is with great joy that we have noticed that many of our students have gained a stronger sense of belonging to the school, increased self-confidence, and a newfound pride.” – Amélie Marois and Julie Vézina, teachers from Grande-Vallée school

During the big Spring-Cleaning Day, more than 10,000 square meters of land around the school will be cleaned and more than 1200 people, including parents, will learn about the importance of avoiding litter and pollution, producing as little waste as possible, reusing and recycling waste, and saving energy.

The Alcoa W5 project activities at Grande-Vallée school support the following SDGs: