Beach Cleaning CIP

Yesterday, I participated in a CIP (community involvement program) organised by my school, Hwa Chong Institution, ProEd consortium. In this CIP, I took up the role of a student leader along with 7 others to help supervise and guide the secondary one ProEdians in their beach cleaning experience. The motive of this CIP is to instill a sense of environmental awareness in the minds of the Sec 1s as well as to help clean the beaches of Changi and Sembawang.

Early in the morning, we gathered in the high school drama centre. First, two Sec4 seniors gave a brief introduction on the schedule as well as the do s and don't s. After that, we were honored to have a member from the Singapore Wildlife Conservation (PS: or at least something like that because I don't remember too well) to deliver a presentation on Singapore's nature reserves. Lastly, the seniors helped spilt the four Sec1 classes into two, whereby two classes would be cleaning one beach. Result, I was assigned to the Sembawang beach with 1P3 and 1P4, along with 3 other seniors.

At 9.45 in the morning, we reached the wonderful beach of Sembawang. I was quite shocked when I first saw the condition of the beach as it was much cleaner than I had expected. There was minimum litter on the surface of the beach but the sea was of the complete opposite. Rubbish such as plastic bags, soft drink cans, Styrofoam containers and many more scattered across the deep blue sea. Apart from that, it was just another cooling and beautiful day at the sea where some families were having picnics and some others fishing. All in all, it was a typical Saturday beach.

After assigning the Sec1 s into groups of two and handing them garbage bags and gloves, we officially declared the start of the beach cleaning process and our juniors raced off towards the beach. Some students struggled to pick up the litter in the water and some even got wet due to the oncoming tides. A few smarter students used long wooden branches to grab the rubbish and soon almost everyone was picking up branches as if the CIP was a “Hunt for Branches”.

At 11.45 a.m, the beach cleaning process ended and the beach had attained a whole new look. It now looked cleaner than ever thanks to the hard work and effort put in by the Sec1 s. The Sec1 s managed to pick up lots of garbage and even found three gigantic tyres! After that, we boarded a bus and returned back to school.

I feel that this CIP was a great success as we managed to raise awareness of the conditions of the beaches in Singapore. I really appreciated the cooporation and enthusiasm shown by the Sec1 s as this was what made the event so successful. I enjoyed myself a lot in this CIP and I hope there will be moore opportunities for me to serve the society and have fun doing it.