What is your wish for this project?

Even though smoking being a common thing in Malaysia, the children in Pulau Perhentian’s Fishermen Village don’t like it. For them this project’s goal is to stop their parents, family or others from smoking and to raise awareness amongst the community. For us (Ecoteer’s Community & Conservation Project) the goal of this project goes beyond a campaign to stop smokers from smoking; our wish is the hope that one day the children of the community will grow up to be non smokers and live in a smoking free community.

How are you going to do it?

After a brainstorming session, we listed the students’ concerns for their community and areas they felt needed improvement. This was followed with the children voting and choosing their first project: “A Smoking Free Community”. From now on (the end of March) we run a three hour Roots & Shoots class on a weekly basis, open for all kids in Sekola Pulau Perhentian (SKPP). Every week we discuss a different topic, related to smoking. Health issues, the respiration system, air pollution, environmental issues and so on will be the topics of discussion for the upcoming weeks of the project. All of the activities will be a mixture of info sessions, science based experiments and games. The kids are involved in choosing the activities based on issues they feel that are important to their community. A quiz about smoking facts, puzzles of healthy and unhealthy lungs, brainstorm sessions, posters, ashtrays and so on will pass by. We are looking forward to see them run around the village being the ‘kids police’ in a couple of weeks.