The NPUST Indigenous Students Resource Center put on its “Summer Life Camp” at Wutai Elementary School (Ligu-Lily Campus) and Timur Elementary School in Pingtung County this year (2024) from July 8th to 19th. A service team of 10 university students held the activities and taught the primary school students about concepts related to natural ecological conservation. The theme of this year’s program gave focus to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and covered such things as carbon reduction, environmental protection, water resources utilization, and recycling. Games were used to make the learning experiences interesting and enjoyable for the young pupils.
The “SDG” theme of the camp was quite new to the service students, so a pre-camp training course was used to familiarize the team with the features of the sustainable development goals and the course design. The three-day training course was held at the end of June.
A total of 55 primary school students from two primary schools participated in this year’s activities. Given the task of serving as “environmental action reporters”, the young students visited tribes nearby their schools and gather information about how residents utilize water resources. Then the students learned how to make filters for domestic water using readily available materials. The activities allowed the children to be creative and make good use of resources while learning to care for the earth in a concrete way. During the camp, the children were also instructed on how to reduce the use of disposable items and save energy. Carbon reduction logs were recorded each day to maintain tabs on their progress as they worked to achieve the service goals. On July 12th, four members of the Ministry of Education even visited the camps to witness the action, and in early August, they issued a letter speaking highly of the results, expressing hopes to see the camp’s activities expand to more areas in the future.
