“Awareness is like the sun,” says a quote by Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. “When it shines on things, they are transformed.”
Awareness was the main objective of a recent poetry, spelling bee and debate competition between local schools, organised by Working on Fire.
“Our focus was to raise awareness among the school children about fire and the environment,” explains Working on Fire’s Thulani Mkhonza, “as we are currently in fire season.”
“In most cases, when doing awareness campaigns, we approach the children at the schools. This time, we wanted to offer them the opportunity to share what they know, in the form of information and ideas…”
The event was held on May 17 at the Ben Pienaar hall at New Republic School and six schools were invited to take part in the competition, which included three categories: Spelling Bee, Poetry and Debate.
Three primary schools participated, with Harpo Primary, Besterspruit Primary and Hluma Intermediate competing against each other. Hluma and Harpo participated in all three categories, while Besterspruit took part in only poetry and the spelling bee. The topic for poetry was anything creative about fire and the environment and participants were judged on their awareness and the power of the message conveyed to the audience.
The debate topic for the competition for both primary and high school teams was, “This house believes that society should look after the environment because it is our only means” and all schools were required to present research and facts to back up their debate.
In the primary school debate category, Harpo came out ahead of Hluma nd took first place. The poetry competition saw Harpo take top spot as well, with Besterspruit and Hluma second and third respectively.
The three high schools who took part were Vryheid High School, Mpofini High and Vryheid Landbou High School. Each school had eight candidates to represent their school in the debate category. Vryheid High finished in third place behind Mpofini High, while Landbou, who included a visual presentation on an overhead projector, took the top spot for their extra effort.
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Mpofini won the poetry category, followed by Vryheid High in second and Landbou in third.
The competitors were given trophies and certificates for the spelling bee, sponsored by Mr B Nyathi from the Working on Fire Howick office. Among the prizes were vouchers from several local take away outlets as well as cash donations from local service stations and a supermarket voucher for R250. The firefighters also donated prizes.
“We would like to thank NRS for the use of the hall and last, but certainly not least, the educators who came with the school children and the adjudicators and management from Working on Fire who oversaw the event,” says Mr Mkhonza.
“This project was not about the competition of winning or losing,” he adds. “It was about the competition of teaching…”
Mr Mkhonza states that they are hoping to arrange another event, similar to this one, later on in 2019, with the same schools as well as more schools who will be invited to attend.
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