Elementary students in Malabon join environment project

Ten-year-old Mark Andre Sioco is now Malabon’s new protector of the environment.

The student of Ninoy Aquino Elementary School and thousands of others like him are now helping clean the streets of the city of northern Metro Manila, a responsibility that local government officials believe is of the utmost importance especially in a flood-prone area such as theirs.

“Children should also learn how to care for the environment. This is one step ahead for the young ones, after all,” Chief Insp. Rodrigo Reyes, city fire marshal, one of the organizers of Juan Four LIFE, as the project is called, told the Inquirer in an interview.

The program was launched primarily to inform children about the ways to prevent fires in keeping with the Fire Prevention Month this March.

Reyes said that environmental awareness could not be excluded from its key advocacies.

Under Juan Four LIFE, each of the 84,000 students of the city’s 113 schools have been collecting, as early as February, at least 10 plastic bottles that they found on the street.

“The program has four advocacies: Be prepared for all kinds of disasters, be eco-friendly, act accordingly and be involved. This is why it’s called Juan Four LIFE and not Juan For LIFE,” Reyes explained.

The term Four, Reyes added, was an allusion to the four primary institutions that have been making the project possible since its launch in February: The city hall, the Bureau of Fire Protection, the Division of City Schools and the noontime television program “Eat Bulaga.”

Once the bottles are gathered in each school, Reyes said they are collected by the organizers, who include several city firemen and representatives of the noon-time TV show.

These visitations, he said, have already started and will last until March 23.

The elementary and high school students who have managed to come up with the minimum number of bottles have already been rewarded with SOS (Sandata on Sakuna) equipment, which include a whistle and a flashlight.

These, Reyes said, could be used by the recipients in cases of disasters, for instance, when a fire breaks out in their community.

So far, organizers have managed to cover some 70 schools since the project launch.

According to the fire marshal, they have also gathered around 100,000 bottles from these institutions, adding that they expected many more in the days to come.

The bottles will be recycled into school chairs and are currently kept by representatives of the noon-time show.

Although the fire marshal admits that Juan Four LIFE requires a lot of hard work, he believes that it is worth it since it is helping students become more conscientious citizens.