International Cleanup Day in Beersheba: An Educational Happening with Ecological Fun and Games

 

Photo: Gabi Bron

A pleasant surprise awaited everyone who arrived at the beautifully landscaped green park in the Shikkun Dalet neighborhood of Beersheba on International Cleanup Day, which is led in Israel by KKL-JNF. The first schoolchildren to get there from several local schools found the park there clean, and there was almost no work left to do in the park itself. Workers from the Beersheba Municipality had cleaned up the park in advance for the colorful Cleanup Day event.

 

In the streets next to the park, however, things looked very different. Groups of children, from elementary school to high school, went all around the streets, carrying trash bags loaded with everything they had collected from the roadsides, lanes and public areas.

 

International Cleanup Day, which is led in Israel annually by KKL-JNF, this year for the 11th time, is a vital educational project in which 120 countries all over the world take part. The International Cleanup Day initiative began in Australia, and Israel was one of the first countries to adopt and also to apply the initiative to Israel's open spaces. Cleanup activities in Israel were made possible thanks to the support of JNF USA and JNF Australia.

 

The city of Beersheba considers International Cleanup Day among its special events. The Beersheba event was the result of cooperation between the KKL-JNF Education Department, which runs the successful Maof program in Beersheba schools; the Beersheba Municipality departments of education and environmental protection; and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI). On the shady green lawns in the park, schoolchildren were participating in assorted activities related to KKL-JNF's various activities, including the national effort to combat desertification, to preserve water sources and landscapes, and to improve the quality of life through afforestation and river rehabilitation. The schoolchildren were also introduced to contemporary approaches to the treatment of waste by sorting it and recycling it.

 

Photo: Gabi Bron

KKL-JNF Educational activities. Photo: Gabi Bron

 

Activities took place in two giant colorful tents. In one of the tents, the children were making decorations and artworks from things that are usually thrown away, such as plastic bottles, scraps of cloth, egg cartons, and so on. In the shade of the other tent, the children were engaged in kitchen work, mainly preparing assorted fruits by cutting them up and separating the edible parts from the waste material, which served as an example of what could be recycled as compost. The edible parts of the fruit were made into fruit shakes, which were enjoyed by each and every one of the hundreds of schoolchildren at the event.

 

We met ninth grade students from the Makif Amit School, which is located right next to the park, with their teacher, Yifat Rosenfeld, as they were putting their preparatory instructions for Cleanup Day into practice, with the help of the detailed booklet published by KKL-JNF's Education Department for the Maof program. “We had a few classes based on the outline of this booklet, in addition to the environmental topics we teach starting from seventh grade,” Yifat said.

 

Using and composting fruit. Photo: Gabi Bron

Re-using refuse for arts and crafts. Photo: Gabi Bron

Classes from four schools were participating in the event, which is designed to promote the social-community involvement of the schoolchildren, who come from the diverse backgrounds of the Shikun Dalet families. These include Israelis whose families emigrated from North Africa, children of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and children of immigrants from Ethiopia, all of them woven into this beautiful human tapestry.

 

In other areas of the park, we met children from the Rabin School, the Shuvu School and the Tuvyahu School, some of them elementary schoolchildren, others in junior high school, and, alongside them, IDF soldiers from one of the units positioned in Beersheba. Shoulder to shoulder, the children and the soldiers were busy collecting trash from the neighborhood, equipped with cotton gloves and T-shirts provided by KKL-JNF, carrying out the assignment with youthful exuberance.

 

Ornit Ginat, KKL-JNF coordinator for the Maof program in Beersheba, had set up two main information stations in the park. One station had a big map of Israel indicating its main forested areas, around which children were having contests and listening to explanations given by Maof counselors. Nearby, there was another group of children learning the principles of environmental protection and sustainable development. “It was very important for us that the Beersheba Municipality and SPNI join us for the International Cleanup Day event, because their work focuses on the main topics included in the Maof program, which is made possible by the support and contributions received from friends of KKL-JNF worldwide,” Ornit noted.

 

Students and soldiers clean together. Photo: Gabi Bron

Heftziba and Ornit with students. Photo: Gabi Bron

 

After a few hours of cleanup work and information, the hundreds of schoolchildren gathered in front of a stage, which had been constructed in the park for the ceremonial part of the event. The Deputy Mayor of Beersheba, Dr. Heftziba Zohar, who is also in charge of the Municipality's Education Department, addressed the young people: “There is special significance to International Cleanup Day right before Rosh Hashana, before the beginning of the new year, which symbolizes renewal and growth. The message of cleaning up the world has special importance in view of the fact that those sending the message are the younger generation, in whose ability to effect change we all believe. We must remember that the earth is the only ball we cannot play around with. It is up to you to take care of it.”

 

Yoav Saad, from the KKL-JNF Southern Region Education Department, another speaker at the ceremony, told the Cleanup Day participants that they should remember that many thousands of people, and millions all over the world, were taking part in this day in order to clean and eliminate the damage of litter, which endangers the quality of the environment and the quality of life in the world. “Seeing you here today, doing everything you were doing, has been a real celebration!” he said.

 

The event concluded with an entertaining educational show called Litterbugs are Trash, which was mainly for the elementary schoolchildren. The waves of laughter that accompanied the performance, which was about the need to sort and recycle garbage, proved more than anything else that the show's messages had achieved their purpose.