MONTEGO BAY, St James — LITTLE Bay All-Age in Westmoreland has won yet another environmental awareness competition.

Last week, the school was named the overall champion in the 9th staging of the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) western Jamaica Clean Schools’ Competition.

Earlier in June, Little Bay copped the 2015 Rockhouse Hotel Green Challenge Quiz title during the sixth staging of the competition held at the Negril Branch Library.

“Our success in these competitions this year has helped to motivate our students and build their

self-esteem. It just goes to show that for a small rural school we can do great things,” Cleopatra Miller Vacciana,

a teacher at the Little Bay

All-Age, told the Jamaica Observer West shortly after the NSWMA competition awards ceremony in Montego Bay last week.

She stressed that the school’s achievements in the competitions were as a result of the hard work put in by everyone associated with the school.

“Everybody worked very hard. The chairman of the school board, the principal, the teachers, members of the school’s environmental club and 4-H club…,” added an elated Miller Vacciana.

The rural Westmoreland co-educational school located in Little Bay, a small fishing village, has 128 students on roll.

Little Bay All-Age won the NSWMA Clean Schools’ Competition from a field of 41 schools located in the parishes of Hanover, Westmoreland, Trelawny and St James.

The competition is aimed at promoting proper waste disposal practices.

Competing schools were required to create projects focusing on the ‘3Rs’ of solid waste maintenance: ‘Reduce, Re-use and Re-cycle’, under the theme, ‘Jamaica’s Beauty is Our Duty’.

Little Bay took top honours for their solar water heater project made from plastic bottles, which landed them the coveted NSWMA trophy. The school also won the $40,000 cash award as well as other prizes.

Second place was awarded to Tower Hill Primary School in St James and third to Albert Town Primary in Trelawny. They were presented with certificates of participation, trophies, prizes by Kool Runnings Water Park, Sunset Beach Resort and Caribbean Producers Jamaica (CPJ) Limited, as well as cash awards of $30,000 and $20,000, respectively.

The ceremony also saw parish awards being presented to top schools: Albert Town Primary, Tower Hill Primary, Sandy Bay Primary and Junior High in Hanover and Little Bay All-Age. The competition lasted from October 2014 to June 2015.

Barracks Road Primary was adjudged the Most Improved School, while Little Bay All-Age copped another major award for their sofa made from plastic water bottles and stones. The award for Best Cultural Item went to Petersfield Primary in Westmoreland for their Gerreh song and dance, ‘No dutty up de Place’.

Coordinator of the competition Sharnon Williams described the staging of the competition as “quite phenomenal.”

“Every effort was made to ensure that the participating schools were kept clean. The students and teachers were equally excited about the competition and so the heights of creativity emerged as the art pieces made from trash were extremely innovative. It is competitions like these that will aid in instilling good values in these students who are the future of the country,” she said.

— Mark Cummings