RCE Kuching has won two awards for the 2019 RCE Awards. The Award, in their eighth years, represents recognition for innovative projects on education for sustainable development within the Global RCE Networks. The Award aimed to honour RCEs globally in addressing sustainable development challenges in their particular regions.
The award winners covered projects across various SDGs’ themes such as climate action, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, and of course, quality education. The award winners were awarded across three categories: (1) Outstanding Flagship Project, (2) Acknowledged Flagship Project, and (3) Honourable Mention.
The 2019 RCE Award was officially announced in RCE Networks’ website on 16 December 2019. There were a total of six winners for ‘Outstanding Flagship Project’ category, thirteen winners for ‘Acknowledged Flagship Project’ category and three winners for ‘Honourable Mention’ category. All of the winners’ projects were competing against 113 projects submitted globally.
RCE Kuching 5R School Campaign Project won “Acknowledged Flagship Project” category for SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
5R (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose) School Campaign Project is led by Sherrymina Kichin and she said that “we are absolutely delighted by the award. It recognizes all of the hardwork by our team and collaborators such as UCSI University, RCE Youth Ambassador, WormingUp, NREB, G.A.M.E.S PLT and many others”. This ongoing campaign is a two-year project that aims to teach young people and school students to implement 5Rs concept in their schools and villages as to minimize the impact of pollutions and dumping of waste. 5R sessions were conducted once a month and the campaign comprised of three phases which are (1) Knowing phase (August 2019 – February 2020), (2) Doing phase (March 2020 – August 2020), (3) Being phase (September 2020 – August 2021).
The campaign kickstarted in 2019 and it has a total participation of 172 school students from three schools namely SMK Siburan, SK St Paul and SK St Bernard. Numerous ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) activities were conducted such as hands-on activities relating to 5Rs (i.e creation of plant pot, birthday card, and innovation products from recyclable materials), games (i.e treasure hunt, quizzes), sharing or talks from numerous agencies and competitions that relates to 5Rs concept. Apart from that, another positive impact of the project includes preparation of few designated areas for 5Rs purpose by the participating schools. Hence, this shows that the campaign has cultivated positive response in increasing the 5Rs awareness as one of the ESD efforts at the among the young people and school students. This is in line with SDG 12 which relates to responsible consumption and production of the local community.
RCE Kuching Sarawak River Art Competition won “Acknowledged Flagship Project” category for SDG 14 – Life Below Water
On the 22nd July 2019, Sarawak River Art Competition 2019 was led by Francesca Enchang and officiated by the State Secretary, Tan Sri Datuk Amar Mohd Morshidi at Kuching Waterfront. The art competition (both tangible and intangible arts) was aimed at gathering unique perspectives that local communities have on their rivers and their sustainability and how they can express themselves in various art forms.
She said, “this is our first project to promote the goals of SDG 6 which is Clean Water and Sanitation and SDG 14; that is, Life Below Water” and she conveys her special thanks to Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA) and Old Kuching Smart Heritage (OKSHe) for providing us with total fund of RM19,500. Moreover, two of our stakeholders, Sarawak River Board and Natural Resources And Environment Board Sarawak also show their support by giving the awareness talk to the public on the importance of keeping the rivers clean. This event wouldn’t be a success without their tremendous support.
We received 80 total of artworks (55 paintings, 19 poems and 6 sculptures). Apart from that, this competition main objective is also to create awareness among the public on the importance of Sarawak rivers as part of the Kuching SMART city. Artists were also encouraged to apply digital inclusion such as the QR bar code to describe their artworks. Adding on, she said “We believe that this competition has given a great impact to the public thus we will continue organize this competition as an annual event. We at RCE Kuching would want to continue to empower our locals to understand what they can do to contribute to each of these global goals”.
In a nutshell, RCE Kuching Chairperson, Associate Professor Dr Yeong Siew Wei personally thanked the RCE Networks and United Nation University for these two awards. She added that, “we at the RCE Kuching, our stakeholders, partners, sponsors, communities and friends are indeed very grateful and happy to receive this great award. Being a quite relative new RCE centre in Borneo, it is certainly a boost to our confidence that we are on the right track of ESD and a motivation for greater things to come. We look forward to the continuous support and guidance from RCE Global”.
RCE Kuching program will continue to teach especially young people, school students and villages to minimize the impact of pollutions and dumping of waste. We are hoping for more volunteers to join RCE Kuching and make the great impact together. For more info, we are reachable via email [email protected] or contact number +6082 596965.