Mont Fleuri primary and secondary take home top prizes in Sids competition |23 September 2019

Since the celebration of the International Year of Small Islands Developing States (Sids) in 2014, the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (MEECC) has initiated the local Sids Day as part of its educational programme. The objective to educate younger generations about our small island states and raising awareness of Sids.

A prize giving ceremony was held at the Mont Fleuri secondary school recently to reward students who have excelled in a competition to mark the event.

The ceremony was attended by the participating schools, the Minister for Environment, Energy, Climate Change Wallace Cosgrow, the principal secretary for early childhood, primary and secondary education, Dr Odile Decomarmond and representatives of Sids Seychelles.

“Small island states are a group of countries that share environmental and economic vulnerabilities. This year’s competition was aimed at getting students to learn from the older generation especially on how our islands used to be, the changes and the impact that development and globalisation has had on our island’s environment and its people,” said PS Decomarmond in her address to the students.

She further added that another important aim of this year’s competition was to produce educational games that schools can then use for teaching and learning about climate change and energy and that knowledge learned within the competition needs to be shared with the population at large.

“I want to take this opportunity to thank all those that have participated in the competitions, and would also like to thank all the organisers and sponsors for this year’s Sids competition,” said the PS.

It was observed during the Sids year celebration that in general, the population knew very little about Sids and that there was a thirst for local knowledge from the general public, especially children and young people.

During previous Sids Day celebrations, it was also observed that learning about other islands was of great interest to the public, especially the students..

“There are many Sids in the world but in Seychelles we mainly focus on neighbouring Sids and this competition serves to educate students about countries as far away as Fiji,” said Jeanette Larue, the director general for education and community outreach.

To commemorate this year’s Sids Day celebration, the MEECC, in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, launched three competitions for schools.

They were climate change and energy educational games where schools had to create educational games to educate our school children and public on climate change and energy in Sids of which Mont Fleuri secondary and Anse Etoile primary schools took home the gold in this category.

Another competition was the Young Journalist and Artist where they had to interview an old citizen to learn more about the changes brought to Seychelles through economic development and the winners were Said Lesperance and Marrysah Rose from Baie Ste Anne, Praslin who interviewed Victorin Laboudallon.

Globalisation and Coconut in Sids was another topic where students had to choose a Sids and research how coconut is being used there.

Baie Ste Anne primary and Anse Boileau secondary schools won this category for showing how coconuts are used in Fiji.

An overall best prize was also awarded to the schools that showed great interest and participated in all categories with distinction, and this award went to the Mont Fleuri primary and secondary schools.

All schools that participated in the competition were also awarded a monetary reward.

Our photos show the winning primary and secondary schools receiving their prizes from Minister Cosgrow.