Despite The Pandemic, Education on Water Preservation Continues

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on most sectors, including on the Bali Water Protection (BWP) programs. We must continue our efforts of education and outreach to schools for the movement.

Adopt a River, one of the BWP sub-programs which engages Bali elementary school students in educational activities, is one of the examples. Some of the learning activities that were planned to be carried out directly in 40 public elementary schools in 9 Bali regencies have been adjusted to online delivery due to full and partial school closures in Indonesia since the first lockdown.

Students in several elementary schools in Bali join the 'Adopt a River' program

Dewa (BWP team) explains BWP's journey before the pandemic

This year, the online class activity has been carried out four times during the pandemic and has been attended by school partners, the BWP team, and the BWP educational partner (Terra Water Indonesia). In each online class, there are ten local elementary schools with 1 teacher each as a school representative and 3 students representing grades 4, 5, and 6. The activity has three sessions related to an educational lesson on environmental ecology, the water cycle, and the importance of hygienic sanitation for humans, especially in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the program implementer, Dewa Wira Utama starts the first session with educational games and quizzes with prizes, which help to enliven the online space, then activities are continued by the presentation on water stewardship.

Adopt a River program's participant

In the second session, Terra Water Indonesia presents WASH education,  and the third session concludes with a Question & Answer round. From our experience of this session, students in the room have been excited to press the 'raise hand' button on their own electronic devices and have asked "what should we do to protect clean water sources on our island, sir?". Of course, we also answered their questions enthusiastically.

In addition to the three sessions, this activity also involves students by encouraging them to write short essays about clean water sources in Bali. Through this essay, students are invited to think critically about how to protect and conserve water in their area, and how to communicate this effectively. The drawing competition announced at the end of the event has also been one of the highlights of this online activity. Each drawing collected from each school will be contested and the winner will receive a prize from BWP. All student representatives who attended the meetings were tasked with distributing BWP learning materials to their classmates through online learning in their respective schools. They will act as agents of change and ambassadors for water guards in their respective schools. (De)