
From the Eco Warriors 27.06.2020
KIS – A Bronze Award Eco-School
This year, KIS ventured into new territory. We have had Eco-Warriors at the school for some time but we wanted KIS to be recognised as an environmentally sustainable school. We applied to join the Eco-Schools Programme run jointly by WWF and Eco-Schools (FEE). The ultimate goal of this programme is to “infuse sustainable habits into the school’s day-to-day functions”. We aimed to get our Bronze Award. There are 49,000 Eco-Schools worldwide, 192 in Malaysia and we now join less than 10 Eco-Schools in Sabah.
What did we do to receive this prestigious award? We had to have an Eco-Coordinator and Mrs Holmes stepped up for that role. We then set up an Eco-Committee which had to include students, teachers, parents and someone from the non-teaching side of school. We met three times, very early before school started, and had many discussions on what we had to do. We had students from Year 2 to Year 8 so it could be quite daunting for them to speak in front of adults and share their ideas. They also had different roles such as running the meetings and taking minutes – again, very challenging but the students did a magnificent job. We had to display those minutes for the whole school community to read.
The second step was to carry out an Environmental review and the Primary and Secondary Eco-Warriors divided that up and shared their results. They looked at things like our water and electricity usage, our school grounds, recycling and the nature around school. As part of this, the Secondary Eco-Warriors met with Miss Elis to find out about laws we must follow. From this review, we moved to Step 3, the action plan. In Secondary as part of the action plan, there was a presentation at the KS3 assembly to remind people to use the recycling bins. We have also had to monitor our action plan and during our committee meetings and Eco-Warriors sessions, we have done just that (Step 4). Step 5 says we must make links to our curriculum and we know we do this but Mrs Holmes, Mrs Davis and Mrs White read all our curriculum documents to check. Step 6 has been about keeping our KIS community informed which we hope we have done through the newsletter and our noticeboard.
The final step, step 7, saw us write an Eco-Code. This contains our objectives and is written in a very simple way so that our whole community understands it.
Mrs Holmes submitted all our documents to the Eco-Schools office and on Monday 22nd June, we were delighted to hear the news that we had been awarded the Bronze Award:
“We would like to congratulate Kinabalu International School for the efforts and time dedicated to turning your school into a greener place. Eco-Schools assessors have assessed your award application and we are pleased to announce Kinabalu International School has received the Bronze award for the year 2020.”
Well done Eco-Warriors, Eco-Committee and KIS.