Corporate partners Salada Foods and ESIROM Limited boosted the playtime and extra-curricular activities at Jebb Memorial Basic School located on Spanish Town Road with the donation of an eco-friendly bowling alley. School Principal, Leonie Salmon Wong-Sue said that the students and teachers welcome the eco-friendly bowling alley and were anxious to get the games on a roll.
“From Monday, the children were peeping through the window curious to see what the main structure was. I don’t think many of our children (who are from the community) are exposed to playing outdoors, especially traditional games, when they are home. Now we have the bowling alley and a hopscotch too. They were initially happy coming outside to have a look at it and more so to play the games,” she said.
Made from recycled materials, primarily plastic bottles for the bowling pins, an old pipe ‘up-cycled’ to make the gutter and ply board forming the land and the overall structure, the bowling alley was a large structure, adjusted to fit into the play area at the school. Salada Foods has been working with administrators at Jebb Memorial Basic School to improve infrastructure and welfare at the institution. The early childhood institution currently has 69 children enrolled and four teachers, inclusive of the principal, who also teaches.
“The partnership with Salada goes way back, before I even arrived here in 1999, and since then they have done so much. They love the students very much and want to see the school up and the doors open so we can continue to have the little ones come in so we can educate them. Everyone loves the gift, it was a creative way to get their attention and get them listening and the token shows Salada was also listening. I know the children will be asking often when they can go out to bowl and this is also a medium for us to teach colours and help them with their fine and gross motor skills, through an experience they will love,” Wong-Sue stated.
The bowling alley was originally constructed by Denzel ‘Trevor’ Edwards, a fisherman by profession, who is passionate about environmental sustainability and plastic waste management, for ESIROM’s 2023 Earth Hour Concert which was held in March.
Salada was delighted to know that the team was able to find a way to repurpose the bowling alley, and according to Tamii Brown, Salada Foods’ general manager, the changes were appropriate and fulfilled the desired outcome of making the bowling alley “an edutainment tool”.
“It was heartwarming to see how excited the children were to receive the bowling alley, and having visitors to share with them on the occasion. Children need these types of engagements in order to function and to enhance their learning capacities and all the better, that it can be done in the eco-friendly space that Salada Foods and our friends at ESIROM have partnered to create. Repurposing the alley was ingenious; and we wanted to build on immersive learning activities with a game such as bowling, that requires critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication amongst the children, all while empowering their educators,” said Brown.
In her efforts to find sustainable projects and ways to educate the youths on their responsibility to the environment, Khalia Hall, sustainability coordinator at ESIROM Limited, discovered that games could not only attract the needed attention at the concert, but help to raise awareness.
“In trying to host the event more sustainably, one of the things we included was the ‘Planet Play’ section and we were happy to have Salada on board to sponsor one of the games. After we saw the impact it made, we never wanted it to go to waste and they told us about Jebb Memorial Basic School and we thought it was a perfect solution to the situation,” Hall said.
She continued, “Something I always say is, a big solution to environmental issues is to raise awareness and to educate; and thinking back to when I was a student in school, I never learnt about it. Now, they’re learning it from a young age and to have a symbolic game that is not only fun but entertaining and educational, they see something like plastic bottles being put to use rather than thrown in the trash. My heart was also warmed from setup to finish, I was expecting the excitement but never expected it to this level, I’m at a loss for words.”
