Green Global Coalition Ties Two Schools For 2013 “Greenest School On Earth” Award

The Global Coalition For Green Schools has announced a tie of two winning schools – the Sing Yin Secondary School in Hong Kong, China, and the Waterbank School at Uaso Nyiro Primary in Laikipia, Kenya – for the 2013 Greenest School on Earth Award.

The coalition is an initiative of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, and the award was announced at the World Green Building Council Annual Congress.

The Sing Yin Secondary School in Hong Kong, China.

The Center for Green Schools said that the award’s goal is to “highlight a K-12 school that exemplifies how sustainability can be integrally woven into the infrastructure, culture, and curriculum of a school.”

The schools submitted for the award were evaluated for criteria, including: the efficient use of resources and reduced environmental impact; the enhanced quality of health and learning for students, teachers, and staff; and the emphasis on sustainability and resource-conservation education.

Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO, and founding chair of the U.S. Green Building Council, said during the announcement that the aim of the award is “to showcase a school’s commitment to sustainability.

“But when we sat down to review this year’s submissions, we felt that we had two schools whose environmental efforts, though very different, were extraordinary in both execution and achievement.”

The two winning schools were each awarded $5,000 to put toward a new or ongoing sustainability project.

The Sing Yin Secondary School in Hong Kong, China

An impressive aspect of the Sing Yin school is that while it serves largely low-income students, the school also boasts an organic farm, two green roofs, a bamboo corner, and an aquarium. Most of the classrooms are equipped with thin-film solar panels or sun-shading devices, as well as other technologies including: advanced LED lighting, light sensors, and motion sensors.

In addition, the school says that it recruits about 100 students every year to serve as environmental monitors, prefects, and ambassadors. Notably in 2012, within the community, the students organized a “Green School, Green Family” campaign, in which they and their families had to conduct energy saving activities to lower household electricity use.

Kwok But, principal of the school, responded to the award, saying, “The Sing Yin Secondary School aims to provide one of the best educations in the world with a global perspective for boys in our local community. We are pleased and excited that our efforts on promoting environmental education could be so well received.”

The Sing Yin school is a Catholic boys’ whole day grammar school, instructed in English, and sponsored by Divine Word Missionaries. It has 30 classes and sits on a 70,000 square foot campus.

The school says that its goal is to develop the spiritual, moral, intellectual, and emotional aspects of the students, as well as to foster their cultural, social, and physical development. Part of the school’s motto is “being able to manifest one’s highest morality.”

“Through these measures, we hope that our students will live a healthy, affluent, and meaningful life,” said the school.

The Waterbank School at Uaso Nyiro Primary in Laikipia, Kenya

The Waterbank proves that it’s possible build an energy efficient school that can also trap large volumes of water in a primarily arid environment for about the same cost as building a traditional regional structure.

Waterbank School at Uaso Nyiro Primary in Laikipia, Kenya. Photo courtesy of PITCHAfrica.

The school was designed by PITCHAfrica and built in partnership with the Zeitz Foundation. PITCHAfrica is a U.S.-based social enterprise organization focused on promoting high-yield community-integrated rainwater harvesting initiatives.

PITCHAfrica explains that a waterbank is “a simple building specially designed to collect, store, and filter rainwater” using clay pot filtration, and can be used as a school, meeting place, clinic, latrine, shop, etc.

The organization adds that these buildings can be customized to meet the particular needs of the communities where they are constructed in terms of size, use, and even whether they are permanent or portable structures. Also these structures are built using local labor and low cost materials that are locally available.

The school in Laikipia, Kenya was built from local materials with local labor for the same cost as a conventional linear school, according to PITCHAfrica. The school was constructed in seven months and was completed in December 2012.

PITCHAfrica described the design of the school, saying that it includes four classrooms with protected gardens for food cultivation, teacher rooms, community spaces, as well as a community courtyard theater with a 350,000 liter per year harvesting capacity.

The school also has a 150,000 liter reservoir under the courtyard with an integrated water-filtration system using ceramic water filters. PITCHAfrica added that the “school building has a harvesting area of 600 square meters and can collect enough water in this semi-arid region for 300 children to have four liters of water a day, all year around.”

The Global Coalition for Green Schools said during its announcement of the awards that “the school serves a disadvantaged community with 25 percent living on less than $1.25 per day,” and that, “Since opening, school attendance has risen from 70 to 90 percent and instances of waterborne diseases have dropped to zero.”

Also talking about the area and the school, PITCHAfrica said, “Nine different ethnicities are represented in the community and the waterbank school student body: Meru, Kamba, Kikuyu, Pokot, Maasai, Samburu, Burana, Turkana, and Somali.

“Poverty is endemic and the region has had a history of ethnic tensions with periodic violence between some of these groups over limited resources. Schools provide the only escape from such conflict for many school age children, particularly girls, and is an important place for the community to come together.

“By providing essential water and food resources in a sustainable way and providing direct support for the community, the waterbank school has become an important catalyst for community development.”

Currently, two new waterbank buildings are under construction at the Endana Secondary School in Laikipia, Kenya. They are a waterbank dormitory for girls, and a waterbank canteen and kitchen. PITCHAfrica also currently has projects in Nigeria and Senegal.

The projects in Laikipia, Kenya are being built in collaboration with the locally based Zeitz Foundation, which works to create and support sustainable, ecologically and socially responsible projects around the world.

Additional Resource

• Waterbank Schools flickr stream

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