Caution! Paper overload!!

Project Paper

These days paper is consumed at a faster rate than it is produced. Did

you know that cutting down trees to make paper is one of the major

causes of global warming? At this rate, in the future, the world will

have no trees and therefore no paper. We heard about the Design for

Change competition through our facilitator Punam Ma‟am and we

decided to try to make a change in the world. Thus, Project Paper was

born.

We met daily to decide on our plan of action. We got some pointers

from the “Design For Change” website as well. We decided on our

project name and who we were aiming to impact. We split the work

among ourselves and decided on how we were going to accomplish the

seemingly-impossible task of creating widespread awareness.

Now came the task of actually implementing our ideas. So we talked to

our principal and vice-principal to get some more valuable inputs on this

project. We got various interesting ideas from them and decided that

we were going to create awareness in three different areas: Our

School, Our Neighborhood and Our Homes. We made colourful posters

on newspapers and hung them up in our school and neighbourood. Next,

we made some paper bags using used paper and newspapers and painted

a re-use message on them – these were then distributed among our

friends, family and neighbours. We also prepared a program for the

school assembly on the theme „Save Paper to Save Our Earth‟. With the

help of some friends, we presented it to the school. This program

included a speech and a small skit. We saw immediate effects as the

students now think twice before throwing away unused paper or making

paper planes.

The impact was caused in all of our focal points. At home we now use

the unused side of paper instead of throwing it away. Our message

painted on the paper bags reached many of our friends, family and

neighbours. We created awareness on saving paper in 3

neighbourhoods. Each of us distributed paper bags to 10 neighbours, a

total of 50 houses. We believe that we changed the mindset of our

school including approximately 1000 students, our administration

office, principal, vice-principal and 70 teachers through our skit. Our

posters attracted a lot of praise from our teachers and friends and

made them think about the cause. We proposed a new CCA for paper

recycling and this idea was taken into consideration by our school. The

idea of sending school notifications through email was implemented and

in this way less paper was used, thus helping our world. Recycling bins

were put up for recyclable materials and used paper. We were glad to

see that students used them well.

The „Design for Change‟ contest was a learning experience for all of us.

It has taught us all to save the world for our future generations. By

putting our heads together, we came up with various ideas to reduce

paper consumption. Meeting up often and staying back after school

bonded us all together because we supported a common cause. We

learnt teamwork, and together we came up with a lot more than we

could on our own. The „Design For Change‟ competition made us view the

world in a different way. Before, we were ignorant to the fact that our

earth was in grave danger. However, because of this enriching yet fun

venture we turned over a new leaf, but not just us. Our family, friends

and teachers made the change as well. While reminiscing about this

project we remind ourselves that even though we focused only on

saving paper we did what we could and we did it well. We did our part

to save the world and we‟re going to continue.

Have YOU started YOUR journey to save the world?