Ministry of Tourism Wraps Up Green Tourism Camp
Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 28, 2023 (ZIZ Newsroom): The Ministry of Tourism wrapped up its week-long Green Tourism Camp in a short ceremony at Kittitian Hill on Friday(July 28, 2023).
The camp catered to children aged 8-12 from four primary schools namely Sandy Point, Newton Ground, St. Paul’s and Dieppe Bay Primary School.
In an interview with ZIZ News, Strategic Planning Officer at the Ministry of Tourism Samantha Boone explained what the camp was about.
“So it’s a green tourism camp, we focus on sustainability, sustainable tourism, as well as agrotourism. The theme for the camp is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” and our slogan for this year is PCube- Protection from Plastic Pollution. The kids learned a lot of different aspects of tourism, sustainable tourism, the effects of pollution on the environment, they learned a bit of agriculture and the importance of food security and basically how to be a tourist, being a tourist themselves and being exposed to the different elements of St. Kitts and Nevis that they themselves can sell St. Kitts as kids.”
One of the many activities that the students engaged in was a recycling competition which was spearheaded by the Taiwan Technical Mission.
Recycling Project Manager, Joyce Chang explained how the idea of the recycling competition came about noting that the competition allowed for the collection of 361 pounds of plastic bottles.
“The Green Tourism Camp invited our team to give them some introduction to recycling and wanted to encourage the children to recycle in their homes, that’s why we decided to do the recycling competition for children and the children were very excited for that. So, we had four groups and the children would bring their bottles from home everyday during the summer camp and this morning we collected all the bottles and the overall collection is around 361 pounds which is a lot for only 40 children.”
She mentioned that apart from the recycling competition other engagement with the children centered around teaching them what is recycling and why it is important to recycle.
Minister of Tourism, Hon Marsha Henderson explained why it is vital to start teaching the federation’s children about the environment, sustainability, hospitality and tourism.
“It is critically important for us to educate our children even younger than eight, I find and we are making conscious steps to make sure that even in the curriculum in schools that children understand that. My child is ten years old, for example, and when we were studying for exams- he’s going to fifth grade and they had to understand the importance of what this camp talks about recycling, reuse, how they can practice things to keep the environment clean and sustainable for tourism. For us, if we don’t do that now, we’re not going to have a destination to sell within 20 years. Outside of selling a destination, we need to make sure that we are creating a safe space for our children. We need to be sustainable; we’re creating nationally a sustainable island state and it starts from a very tender age.”
During the ceremony, the students were given participation certificates and special prizes.
The Ministry is hoping to expand the camp to include students island-wide going forward.
