MANY children do not like to eat vegetables, but one school is encouraging them to at least grow them.

Visit Golden Valley Primary and Infant School in West Rural St Andrew and you will find a burgeoning container garden: used tyres fashioned into colourful plant pots with rich soil sprouting the first few leaves of sorrel, cucumber, banana, plantain, Scotch bonnet pepper, and sugar cane.

All this, with little assistance from teachers, according to principal Yvonne Rufus-Francis.

“The children come in early and water the plants, and are proud to show off their garden,” she said. “We even started a compost heap to ensure that our plants and vegetables get the best nourishment.”

And it’s not only the abundance of brightly painted tyres-cum-flower pots that will grab your attention as you enter the school building, itself decked in the colours of the national flag. It’s also hard not to notice that this school of just over 200 students is squeaky clean.

Golden Valley Primary, which recently copped four top prizes in the National Solid Waste Management Authority’s (NSWMA’s) regional Clean Schools Competition, takes very seriously the business of keeping its environs clean, ‘green’, and beautiful.

“We tell the students that they are the policemen of the school. If they see someone drop a piece of paper, they have a responsibility to tell the person to pick it up,” Rufus-Francis said.

To help ensure that they don’t forget their duty, every morning they have to recite the school’s creed:

‘Cleanliness is next to godliness, litterbugs should be punished, environmental damage must stop, all should be involved in keeping Jamaica clean, no-one should litter the street, schools must be kept clean and tidy, communities have a responsibility to keep their areas clean, health and sanitation stimulate learning, outbreak of diseases can be curtailed, one and all should be involved in proper garbage disposal, lifestyles change when our surroundings are clean and beautiful’.

The objective, the principal said, is to have students of the 76-year-old institution live, speak, and practise the creed. So far, it’s working.

“We see a change in the students’ attitudes and their behaviours. We are really happy and proud that they have developed a level of consciousness about the environment and they appreciate the importance of keeping it clean,” said Rufus-Francis.

Winning the NSWMA competition has helped to increase their motivation.

“After all, we not only came out on top, literally ‘cleaning out’ the rest of the competition, but winning has helped to put this little rural school on the map,” the principal boasted.

Besides winning the top prize for Cleanest and Greenest School in the Metropolitan Parks and Markets Region, Golden Valley Primary and Infant School also won:

* the top prize for Best Waste-to-Art project (an impressive table centrepiece made from a used car tyre);

* Best Cultural Performance (a wedding ceremony with the bride Ms Clean and the groom Mr Green blessed by the NSWMA, surrounded by friends and well-wishers, including Scotiabank as the ‘father’ of the bride); and

* first place for Kingston and St Andrew.

No other school in the competition’s four-year history has won all four top prizes in any one competition.

“It is such a pleasure to watch these students perform with such vigour and enthusiasm, to see them take pride in their environment, and to see them display their creativity,” said NSWMA executive director Joan Gordon-Webley.

“We are proud of our responsibility to assist in instilling in our children a sense of pride and responsibility for their surroundings, and to encourage them to start practising proper waste disposal, even at an early age,” she added.

“We have to do something to change the mindset of our citizens — from the young to the elderly — to stop littering the streets and the schools, and we will be going out more aggressively to promote this in schools in the future,” Gordon-Webley said further.

To make that happen, she said the NSWMA intends “to widen the competitions to include schools at all levels, not just primary schools, because we all must learn to treat the environment better”.

“We are very encouraged by these teachers and students who have done so well, and we want to say a big thank you to our sponsor Scotiabank for being extremely supportive and for partnering with us,” Gordon-Webley added.

Scotiabank this year sponsored four NSWMA competitions islandwide, as part of their Bright Future programme, which focuses on children, and their Going Green campaign which has an environmental focus.

“Scotiabank is pleased to associate with the NSWMA Clean Schools Competition as it fits well with our ongoing programmes which support the development of young people and promote a green, healthy environment,” said Scotia’s director of public and corporate affairs, Joylene Griffiths-Irving.

“We congratulate the winners and hope that they will continue to uphold the values of the competition in their schools and communities,” added Griffiths-Irving who is also executive director of the Scotiabank Foundation.

Other winners in the NSWMA Clean Schools competition were:

* Sandy Bay Primary (Western Parks and Markets Region);

* Mt St Joseph Preparatory (Southern Parks and Markets Region); and

* Higgins Land Primary and Junior High (North Eastern Parks and Markets Region).

The winning schools received $150,000 each, in addition to the Clean Schools Trophy.