Today we know that the childhood years are decisive in the development of our personality, a time in which the capacities that we will develop as adults are shaped. The experts say that in the growth and education of children, two chief areas are involved: family and school.
I would like to emphasize the importance of school and, above all, examine how we can take advantage of the school environment to achieve a real improvement in the living conditions of children.
In Meki (Ethiopia) we are carrying out an education program on disease prevention in three rural schools in the area. We give weekly lessons to each course, from first level to eighth. Teachers have made room in their tight programs for our lessons because they consider it very important that children learn healthy habits such as washing their hands with soap, personal hygiene care, and lessons on environmental health: recycling, using trash cans...
Some of the things we teach have an immediate application: unclogging stagnant waters to prevent malaria-transmitting mosquitoes from laying their eggs on them; washing hands with soap; purifying drinking water and storing it in clean and covered containers, so that it may not be contaminated with dust or bacteria that will cause diarrhea. These are actions that, while being very simple, can have very important results.
Other times it may seem that we teach the students too much: when we talk about cleaning the environment or the use of litterbins, realities that are far from the everyday context of these children. In Meki there are no sewage systems, much less a habit of recycling. Here, objects which have become useless only have two possible destinations: they are either burnt or thrown on the ground.
However, we insist on all these contents with the conviction that although our students do not have many means now, perhaps they will have them in the future, and then they will remember what they are learning today at school. What a great achievement would it be if, little by little, the children and young people of Meki were gaining a strong environmental consciousness! The fruits of good practical education are truly unpredictable.
