Environmental Cleaning Day at Buddhist Peace School

At the Buddhist Peace School, we commenced the new term with cleaning the community and inculcating values of environmental responsibility into our students. The pupils collected plastics, the most common and hazardous waste to the environment in the surrounding communities. It was a great learning experience for the students as they practically engaged in cleaning and becoming more mindful not to litter their surroundings.

It was a humbling act for people in the community because it is very rare to see school children carrying out this kind of environmental activity. It was a wakeup call that this is our social responsibility as a community. In the ancient Buganda cultural setting, people would gather and do communal cleaning of their village. This is was called “Bulungi Bwansi” and people would sound drums call people “Gwanga mujje”. However, this has slowly phased out but we are glad revitalize this practice.

We are interconnected to the natural environment and we can’t isolate ourselves from it. Every element of our existence stems from our surroundings. Cleaning the environment is a fundamental environmental management process to put unwanted waste in proper places, where it does not cause harm or any e­ffect to the natural environment. Therefore, as our students grow, we encourage them to be responsible towards the environment because we cannot live and survive amidst waste.